<b>BATHING</b> / Kazue Yamagishi1930<b>SOLD</b></em>

Details

At the tender age of 15, Yamagishi Kazue left his hometown of Nagano and moved to Tokyo, where he worked as a woodblock carver for the Yomiuri Shinbun Company from 1906 to 1916. While in Tokyo, Yamagishi also studied Western-style painting (yōga) with Kuroda Seki, one of the most recognized and influential Western-style painters of the time. From 1926-1929 he traveled abroad, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, both to Europe and the United States, to demonstrate and promote Japanese woodblock printmaking. He was commissioned by both shin hanga and sosaku hanga artists to carve wood blocks and, in some cases, even print the works himself. His clientele included Takehisa Yumeiji, Kaburagi Kiyokata, Ishikawa Toraji, Hiroshi Yoshida, Paul Jacoulet, and Koshiro Onchi. Due to his skills and interest in printmaking, Yamagishi was one of those artists that straddled both traditions and was fluent in shin hanga and sosaku hanga idioms.

In this print, Yamagishi provides the viewer with a highly expressive, almost impressionist, design of bathing nude with a striking Western appearance. The subject is not surprising, as this work was completed after his return to Japan from abroad. The print is executed in soft and muted pastels. Yamagishi skillfully adds a light overprinting of white that evokes a sense of steam emanating from a hot bath. One can see why Onchi, arguably the most expressive printmaker of this time, hired Yamagishi to help produce some of his work that was destined for inclusion in dojin-style art magazines.

Connoisseur's Note

This print is an early self-carved, self-printed work executed faithfully in the sosaku hanga tradition. At this time, these creative prints were more experiments than commercial ventures for the artist. Yamagishi rarely extended this type of work into large editions, thus making this impression extraordinary rare and that much more desirable.