Preview our FALL 2026 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
PRE-ECHO PRESS
Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts
Edited with text by Jordan Stein. Interview by Kate Horsfield.
Rich and evocative paintings from an underrecognized Japanese American abstractionist
A New York Times 'Best Art Books of 2023' pick
The result of several years of research, Heart of Hearts is the first book dedicated to the life and work of Japanese American artist Miyoko Ito. Ito was born in Berkeley, California to parents of Japanese descent and educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied watercolor. A month before her graduation, in 1942, Ito was sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center, an internment camp south of San Francisco. Released several years before her husband, she transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago but never graduated. Unlike the other "Allusive Abstractionists" with whom Ito was loosely associated, her geometric compositions often evoke landscapes, interiors and the human body. Irregular forms are rendered in layers of paint applied horizontally, creating an ombré effect reminiscent of a sun over the horizon. Working on one canvas at a time, her technical precision was reflected in her slow working process, painting in her studio from sunrise to sunset, often seven days a week. "I have no place to take myself except painting," she confided in a 1978 interview, "it has been my biggest life-giving force." While Ito's paintings have recently been the subject of critically acclaimed exhibitions at Matthew Marks Gallery, Artists Space and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, her elegant and mysterious abstractions were and are scarcely known beyond Chicago, where she spent much of her adult life and made a career. Assembled by Pre-Echo Press and Jordan Stein—curator of Ito's first two solo institutional exhibitions in nearly 40 years—Heart of Hearts features over 100 full-color plates, archival materials, a 1978 interview with the artist and a 5,000-word biographical essay that contextualizes Ito's practice and aims to afford the artist her proper place within a history of postwar American art. Miyoko Ito (1918–83) was born in Berkeley, California, to Japanese parents. As a young girl, she spent several years with her mother and sister in Japan, where she first experimented with calligraphy and painting. Ito participated in the 1975 Whitney Biennial and was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Renaissance Society in 1980. Her work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
"Aurora" (1966) is reproduced from 'Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New York Times: Arts
Jason Farago
More than a refoundation of a critically important American artist, this book is a labor of love from Stein and the painter Matt Connors, who’s published it through his own imprint.
Frieze
Vanesa Peterson
Neither a monograph nor a catalogue raisonné – the editors note, for example, that they were only allowed to photograph nine of the 18 works contained in one private collection – Heart of Hearts is a true testament to its publishers. It might seem early to call it, but I doubt there will be a better art book released in 2024.
The World of Interiors
Kitty Grady
An experience of flicking, thinking and moving through, 'Heart of Hearts' gets right to the core of the artist, and maybe even further.
The Art Newspaper
Beth Williamson
Miyoko Ito’s intriguing merger of internal and external space gets proper recognition and a fresh look in this visual feast.
We see so many excellent books here. Every season, twice per year, more than 500. And yet, even after three-and-a-half decades in business, bringing in books from all around the world—from big publishers and small—this one stands out. Weighing in at 460 pages with a two-inch spine, this book captures that most special and difficult-to-capture quality of discovery. The subject of this book, first published in 2024, and quickly sold out, is the Japanese American artist Miyoko Ito, prolific but underrecognized in her lifetime, but rising now—forty-three years after her death at age 65. “This is the first book dedicated to the life and work of artist Miyoko Ito (1918–1983),” Jordan Stein writes, “an artist of uncommonly mysterious and exquisite vision. While hardly unknown during her lifetime—her work sold briskly in her adopted hometown of Chicago—she endured for decades the fate of the artist’s artist: revered by fellow travelers but kept quiet, like a secret. She was understood beyond the Midwest–if she was understood at all—as a regional artist, that most disparaging and unreasonable of categories. In recent years, as a more expanded view of art history has taken hold, there has been increasing critical acclaim for her paintings, and an ever-growing band of admiring artists, curators and collectors. Regardless of her relatively limited reputation, she was intensely, even desperately, devoted to her practice. ‘I have no place to take myself except painting,’ she confided in a 1978 interview, bringing to mind an image of Ito—her long dark hair twisted into rolls—crossing a threshold into Painting as one might enter a foreign country, or a new dimension. As she said, ‘It has been my biggest life-giving force.’ Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts is a long-overdue window into that unique force.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 9.5 x 11.5 in. / 460 pgs / 160 color / 13 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $85.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $119 GBP £70.00 ISBN: 9798889929499 PUBLISHER: Pre-Echo Press AVAILABLE: 3/5/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Pre-Echo Press. Edited with text by Jordan Stein. Interview by Kate Horsfield.
Rich and evocative paintings from an underrecognized Japanese American abstractionist
A New York Times 'Best Art Books of 2023' pick
The result of several years of research, Heart of Hearts is the first book dedicated to the life and work of Japanese American artist Miyoko Ito. Ito was born in Berkeley, California to parents of Japanese descent and educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied watercolor. A month before her graduation, in 1942, Ito was sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center, an internment camp south of San Francisco. Released several years before her husband, she transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago but never graduated. Unlike the other "Allusive Abstractionists" with whom Ito was loosely associated, her geometric compositions often evoke landscapes, interiors and the human body. Irregular forms are rendered in layers of paint applied horizontally, creating an ombré effect reminiscent of a sun over the horizon. Working on one canvas at a time, her technical precision was reflected in her slow working process, painting in her studio from sunrise to sunset, often seven days a week. "I have no place to take myself except painting," she confided in a 1978 interview, "it has been my biggest life-giving force."
While Ito's paintings have recently been the subject of critically acclaimed exhibitions at Matthew Marks Gallery, Artists Space and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, her elegant and mysterious abstractions were and are scarcely known beyond Chicago, where she spent much of her adult life and made a career. Assembled by Pre-Echo Press and Jordan Stein—curator of Ito's first two solo institutional exhibitions in nearly 40 years—Heart of Hearts features over 100 full-color plates, archival materials, a 1978 interview with the artist and a 5,000-word biographical essay that contextualizes Ito's practice and aims to afford the artist her proper place within a history of postwar American art.
Miyoko Ito (1918–83) was born in Berkeley, California, to Japanese parents. As a young girl, she spent several years with her mother and sister in Japan, where she first experimented with calligraphy and painting. Ito participated in the 1975 Whitney Biennial and was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Renaissance Society in 1980. Her work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
