In 1998, Teruko Yokoi was commissioned to create a suite of works for the opening of the Allegro Hotel, part of the Kursaal Center in Bern, Switzerland. The resulting series, Water Music, reimagines the timeless subject of the water lily through her signature language of abstraction and color. Each offset lithograph was produced in a limited edition of twenty, with only a small number of artist’s proofs retained by the artist. Every impression was individually hand-finished by Yokoi in egg tempera and metallic pigment, giving each work a distinct surface and tone that reflects her sensitivity to rhythm, reflection, and light.
This EMERALD ROOM exhibition brings together the only complete remaining Épreuve d’Artiste portfolio from that commission, a rare and cohesive set that captures the spirit of Yokoi’s late career in Bern. The Water Music portfolio anchors the presentation, accompanied by a small selection of related works on paper and editions drawn from the artist’s broader exploration of the water lily. These include four works from her Japanese Diary series, three editioned prints from the Silent Water and Water Lilies series, and one large egg tempera work on paper that reflects her continued experimentation with surface and translucency.
To provide historical and visual context, the exhibition also includes a selection of works on canvas from ranging from an early 1957 canvas that roots this body of works to her New York period along with a series of Acrylic works on Canvas from the early 2000s through 2011. These paintings reveal how Yokoi carried forward the themes first articulated in Water Music, developing a visual vocabulary rooted in nature’s quiet movements and shifting light. Seen together, these works offer insight into an artist who fused abstraction with a deep awareness of seasonal change, memory, and renewal.
Water Music will remain on view in this EMERALD ROOM through December 31, 2025. A digital catalogue is in production to accompany the exhibition, with a potential print edition to follow. Collectors, curators, and writers are invited to explore the full presentation and inquire about available works.
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Bern, the Kursaal, and the Allegro Hotel Commission
The Kursaal Bern stands as one of the city’s most recognizable cultural landmarks. Overlooking the Aare River and the historic Old Town, it has long served as a gathering place for art, music, and public life. Originally conceived in the late nineteenth century as a music pavilion and summer theatre, the complex grew into a major civic venue hosting international congresses, performances, and exhibitions.
In 1998, the Kursaal expanded its presence with the opening of the Allegro Hotel, a contemporary addition designed to connect modern hospitality with Bern’s architectural heritage. The hotel’s clean lines, natural light, and integration with the existing congress spaces reflected the city’s evolving character at the turn of the century.
It was during this moment that Teruko Yokoi, then a well-established artist living in Bern, was invited to create a commissioned series of prints for the hotel’s inauguration. Her Water Music lithographs, hand-painted in egg tempera and metallic pigments, were inspired by the reflective surfaces and quiet movement of water, echoing both the Kursaal’s modern elegance and the natural rhythm of the city surrounding it. The project affirmed Yokoi’s enduring presence in Bern’s artistic community and her sensitivity to the dialogue between art, architecture, and place.
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Water Music Épreuve d'Artiste Complete Portfolio
A complete Épreuve d’Artiste portfolio of Water Music is being made available. This portfolio includes nine hand-finished lithographs created by Teruko Yokoi in collaboration with Franz and Eliane Whitter. This rare full set represents the artist’s lyrical exploration of light and reflection across changing hours and seasons, each impression distinguished by her own hand in egg tempera and metallic pigment. Select individual impressions from the series, each uniquely painted and signed, may also be viewed in the Editions Gallery. -
Expressions of Water Lilies throughout Teruko's Career
Morning Blue, 1957
Oil on canvas, 46 x 35 7/8 in
Teruko Yokoi Hinageshi Museum of Art, Ena, Gifu Prefecture Japan -
Stone and Metal Impressions as a Medium
The prolific nature of Teruko Yokoi's print careerTeruko Yokoi’s printmaking practice reflects a deep engagement with both the material and conceptual possibilities of stone and metal lithography. Working closely with her master printers and their studio teams, she drew each layer of a print directly onto a separate limestone block or metal plate. Every color required its own etched surface, and each sheet of paper was placed repeatedly on the press to build the final image through precise alignment. Yokoi selected pigments not only for their individual tones but also for the chromatic interactions created when colors overlapped, resulting in works with striking depth and atmospheric complexity. Her approach to tonal layering and the careful calibration of translucency reveal an artist who viewed printmaking as a field for experimentation equal to painting.
By the 1970s, and 1980s, Yokoi had begun to expand the expressive vocabulary of lithography through techniques such as ghost imaging, which appears in prints like Frost, 1971 and November, 1976. This method introduced veils of soft opacity and allowed shapes to hover in space in a manner reminiscent of her oil paintings from the period. Among her most significant achievements in stone lithography is Water Lilies (1987), a print that stands at a transitional moment in her career. Although fundamentally a stone lithograph, every impression was extensively hand painted with egg tempera and metallic pigments. Yokoi added lilies in white, yellow, and red, along with sweeping strokes and splashes of copper, silver, or white tempera. Each impression is unique in the number and placement of flowers, the sequence of splashes, and the interplay of metallic tones. Water Lilies represents one of the more intricate hand finished graphic works of her career and foreshadows the methodology she would refine in the Water Music series a decade later.
As Yokoi aged into her seventies, she transitioned toward offset lithography in the mid 1990s, finding it easier to manipulate lightweight aluminum plates rather than heavy limestone blocks. While she had introduced hand painted elements in some earlier editions, the period following Water Lilies marked a shift in scale and intention. Hand finishing became central rather than supplementary, often applied to every impression in an edition rather than limited to a few artist’s proofs. Her subject matter also evolved, with hand painted motifs such as lilies taking on a primary role instead of serving as subtle accents behind printed forms. Edition sizes grew smaller, and the prints themselves became increasingly painterly, culminating in the hand embellished Water Music portfolio of 1998.
Throughout these decades, Yokoi’s prints entered major public and corporate collections, underscoring their importance within her oeuvre. Institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery acquired impressions of her work, as did organizations including Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank of New York, and Metropolitan Structures. This sustained institutional interest reflects both the sophistication of her techniques and her distinct ability to merge Eastern and Western sensibilities in the graphic arts. Water Lilies occupies a pivotal place in this history, bridging her mastery of traditional stone lithography with the innovative hand finished methods that later defined her offset works and ultimately shaped the creation of the Water Music series.
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Klang Des Wassers II (Sound of Water), 1971
Prelude to Water Music
Klang Des Wassers II, 1971
Oil on Canvas
49 3/4 x 39 7/8 in
By 1971, Teruko Yokoi had fully absorbed her experiences from New York and Paris and was living in Bern, where her art began to shift toward a quieter, more distilled modernism. Klang des Wassers II, translated as The Sound of Water, reflects this period of introspection and technical refinement. The surface is a study in tonal restraint, with soft fields of pale pigment broken by an undulating dark form edged in blue that suggests both geological strata and the rhythm of water meeting stone. The painting invites contemplation through its balance of stillness and motion, abstraction and sensory memory.
This canvas represents a pivotal link between Yokoi’s early color-driven abstraction and the meditative works that followed in the 1990s. The subtle gradations of hue and the near-monochrome composition anticipate the serenity that defines the Water Music portfolio. Seen in the context of this EMERALD ROOM presentation, Klang des Wassers II serves as the conceptual foundation of the exhibition, a point where sound, rhythm, and image merge into a single sensory experience.
While not part of the 1998 Allegro Hotel commission, the painting embodies the same sensibility that would later shape those hand-finished lithographs and subsequent Water Lily canvases. Its inclusion within this viewing room allows visitors to trace Yokoi’s lifelong engagement with the theme of water, from her early explorations of color and light to this serene meditation that captures the essence of movement, reflection, and quiet sound.
Klang des Wassers II will be available for inquiry during this EMERALD ROOM exhibition before traveling to a forthcoming presentation in the spring of 2026. Interested collectors may submit an inquiry to be placed on the priority list for consideration as the work enters its next exhibition cycle.
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Contextual Works: Water Music Anchoring a Contemporary Body of Work
Acrylic and metallic pigment on canvasIn the years following her Water Music commission, Teruko Yokoi revisited the motif of the water lily with renewed freedom and depth. Works such as Water Lily Pond (2001), Waterlilies – Morning (2010), and Morgendämmerung (2011) reveal her mature command of surface and light. These canvases are less about depiction than sensation, translating the shimmer of reflected sky and the stillness of water into layered fields of color and texture. Metallic powders merge with acrylic pigments to create glimmering veils that shift as the viewer moves, evoking the quiet motion of wind and light across a pond. This technique was an extension of the mixed medium compositions of metallic powders, egg tempera and wax stick used in her compositions on paper.
The series demonstrates how Yokoi’s lifelong dialogue with nature evolved into a form of abstraction that feels both meditative and physical. Through the interplay of translucence and opacity, she captured the tension between presence and disappearance, suggesting that what is seen in nature is never still. These works also speak to her technical sophistication, combining Japanese sensibilities of material refinement with a distinctly modern European palette.
Like her earlier Poppies series, the Waterlilies paintings were among Yokoi’s most successful bodies of work, with nearly all canvases placed in private and institutional collections. Only a handful of works on paper and editioned prints remain in the estate today. Their rarity underscores the significance of this late period, when Yokoi distilled decades of painterly experimentation into serene yet powerful meditations on light, reflection, and the continuity of life.
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Additional Works Available for Acquisition
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In Closing
Water Music brings together a rare constellation of works that illuminate the depth and invention of Teruko Yokoi’s printmaking practice. From the hand finished stone lithographs of the 1970s and 1980s to the complete Épreuve d’Artiste portfolio from the Allegro Hotel commission, this exhibition reveals an artist who approached the printed surface with the same rigor and sensitivity that defined her paintings. Through her use of layered pigments, ghosted impressions, and hand painted elements, Yokoi transformed lithography into a medium of reflection, movement, and light.
For many viewers, these works offer a new way to understand her career. The prints shown here demonstrate how Yokoi’s ideas traveled between canvas and paper, how experimentation shaped her later style, and how her artistic language grew more distilled and contemplative with time. Together they form a narrative that is both intimate and expansive, charting the evolution of an artist whose engagement with nature never ceased to evolve.
We invite you to spend time with these works and to consider their place within your own collection or institution. Each print and drawing carries a part of Yokoi’s vision and offers an opportunity to support the preservation and continued study of an important postwar artist. For inquiries, availability, or assistance in selecting a work, please contact us directly.
