<b>OBJECT NO. 4</b> / Koshiro Onchi1954<b>SOLD</b></em>

Details

Koshiro Onchi was one of the leading printmakers in 20th-century Japan. He is credited with producing the first work of abstraction in Japan in 1915. Onchi was comfortable in abstract and representational formats, making his prints stylistically varied. He is known for imbuing his work with an expressive, thought-provoking, and emotionally potent quality. In many cases, his most expressive work remains unrivaled today. With his charisma, Onchi tended to the flame of the Sosaku Hanga movement during the dark years leading to and during the war by encouraging artists to produce creative prints for art's sake. 

Object No. 4 belongs to a series of four prints the artist produced in 1954. Inspired by scraps of wood sourced from the building of daughter's home, Onchi repurposed the wood remnants and utilized them as printing blocks. It is astonishing how effective these scraps were as printing blocks, as Onchi was skillfully able to coax subtle and striking printing effects from them. The entire background owes its form and texture to the repurposed wood in this work. Onchi utilized other found objects such as two leaves, a shell, and a net-like article to further draft the composition.

This striking design is playful in its compositional arrangement, as the leaves seem to interact with each other and with the net-like form. Although clearly abstract, there is a fascinating tension inherent in the design as the composition is also representational, evoking the objects used in the printing of the design.

Connoisseur's Note

Ever the experimenter, Onchi made each impression of this design different. However, this work displays greater variances than the other extant impressions by employing a lighter blue at the bottom and the more pronounced woodgrain pattern in the upper portion of the design. The shell-like form at the lower right demonstrates a more pronounced printing with thicker applications of pigment. In contrast, the net-like form at the lower left is significantly lighter than other impressions. This work's significant differences from other impressions inspired the editors of the 1977 Onchi catalogue raisonne to include it alongside the other more standardized version in its appendix.

This work belongs to the artist's most celebrated and critically acclaimed prints. It comes with a hand-numbered label with the edition of 3/5. The artist did not produce any work in 1955, the year he died, so this impression is among the last work produced by Onchi.