<b>DISTANT VIEW OF TOKYO</b> / Koshiro Onchi1929<b>SOLD</b></em>

Details

Though abstraction captured Koshiro Onchi’s imagination, he turned to representational subjects in the late 1920s in earnest as a means to promote Sosaku Hanga and gain more public acceptance for this misunderstood genre. Onchi believed abstraction best suited him, as the style was ideal for conveying the wide ranges of the artist's emotional experience. However, abstraction was not understood in Japan at this time, and Onchi knew he had to take another avenue in the struggle to legitimize this art form. Turning away from abstraction posed a problem for Onchi. The obvious question must have plagued him—how does one charge representational woodblock prints with emotions? Onchi resolved this problem by developing a highly creative style where the emphasis was on both the design and the method in which the print was executed. This style had a strong painterly effect, which also helped Onchi exhibit hanga in the chief art exhibitions sanctioned by the conservative government, whose taste was primarily Western-style oil painting.

In this Onchi landscape, the focus is on the gritty hazing smog-like conditions of the growing metropolis, Tokyo. The design’s colors are a mix of bluish-gray and a yellow that appears soiled by one of the many factory smokestacks visible out in the distance. There is traffic on the road that divides these two city blocks. Lights from the cars below and one visible in a window of the building closest to the viewer are the only elements in the composition not tainted by this urban silt. The scene is dreary and grim and may perhaps be a criticism for the undesirable consequences of unchecked industrialization in an urban environment.

Connoisseur's Note

Onchi did not believe in producing unified printed work; he saw printmaking as a creative process, not a mode of duplication, with each printing as an opportunity to express his emotional state at the moment of creation. Given that, this print is markedly different from the few other known impressions in that the overall coloration is lighter with less of a focus on the contrast between the artificial light emanating from the city and the quickly the dissipating light of early evening.