1950s "Earthenware And Haniwa" Japanese Woodblock Print

Description

Mabuchi Tōru (1920 – 1994) Earthenware and Haniwa (D) 1959. Signature and seal upper right. Mat board covers the margin … more Mabuchi Tōru (1920 – 1994) Earthenware and Haniwa (D) 1959. Signature and seal upper right. Mat board covers the margin which may have date, title and edition. Visible area: H 21.5 in. x W 15.75 in.

Artist Biography:
Mabuchi Toru was born in 1920 in Tokyo as the son of a woodblock engraver and artist. His father was his first teacher. Later he entered the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and became a student of the sosaku hanga artist Unichi Hiratsuka. Mabuchi Toru graduated from Tokyo University in 1941 at the beginning of the Pacific War.
After the war Mabuchi Toru became a full-time artist. Favorite themes of the artist are landscapes, still lifes and pottery.Among the artists of the sosaku hanga art movement, he is rather unique due to a strange technique that he had developed himself. The website of the Bristish Museum describes it as follows:"By this time he had developed a unique way of printing which is close to Pointillisme. He cuts up very thin wood into small pieces which he then glues to his block in a mosaic-like pattern. A large number of these may go to make one print. His production is therefore rather small."
Mabuchi Toru died in 1994. less