Label Text:
Munakata Shikō was one of the most prolific and important Japanese printmakers of the twentieth century, garnering international prizes and accolades, as well as receiving the Order of Culture, Japan’s highest artistic honor, in 1970. Initially an oil painter, he turned to printmaking in the mid-1920s, for a time studying under Hiratsuka Un’ichi. In 1939, Munakata began to conceive of his works not as printed pictures but as “pictures born from the board,” leading him to sketch directly onto his woodblocks and to alter the designs during carving. This print showcases his urazaishiki hanga, or “prints colored from the back,” a technique wherein the artist applies pigment to the back of the printed image, burnishing it with a baren, and allowing it to seep through to the front. Though he was always extremely myopic and lost sight in his left eye entirely in 1960, Munakata was undaunted, as this print, executed in 1965, proves.
BB, 2014
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2010.35 |
