Takato Yamamoto

Takato Yamamoto, “Saint Sebastian (聖セバスチャン)”, 2005, Woodblock Print

Takao Yamamoto is a japanese artist born in 1960 and who experimented with the Ukiyo-e Pop style and further refined and developed that style in order to create what he calls the Heisei estheticism style.

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs and landscapes, tales from history, the theatre and pleasure quarters. It is the main artistic genre of woodblock printing in Japan.

Yamamoto usually portrays famous occidental myths, such as Salome or Saint Sebastian. His graphic depictions of sex and death remind the work of the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era and of Symbolist painters such as Gustave Moreau or Aubrey Beardsley.

Okiie Hashimoto

Okiie Hashimoto, “Sand Garden Scene”, 1959, Wood Block Print, Edition of 60

Japanese printmaker Okiie Hashimoto graduated from Tokyo School of Fine Art in 1924 with training in Western-style oil painting. He also studied with the printmaker Haratsuka Un’ichi; but it wasn’t untill the 1930s that Hashimoto began to make woodblocks in any great number. After Hashimoto retired from his teaching career in 1955, he concentrated on his printmaking.

Hashimoto’s prints from the period between 1957 and 1966 represent a particular phase of his work which was imbued with complex perspectives and drawn with aspects of Western abstraction. He used modernism with its abstract tendencies to show a subtle view of reality.

Hiroyuki Tajima

Hiroyuki Tajima, “Unforgettable Altar B”, Color Woodblock, 1984 Edition of 50

Hiroyuki Tajima was was born in Tokyo in 1911 and graduated from Nihon University in 1932. In 1943, he graduated from the Western-style painting division of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Tajima created his first print in 1946, and joined the Bijutsu Bunka Kyokai’ a group dedicated to exploring and reviving the abstract and surrealist painting ideals that had been suppressed during WWII. He also studied with Nagase Yoshi, an artist of the Sosaku Hanga school. In 1963, Tajima became a member of the Nihon Hanga Kyokai, the Japanese Print Association.

In order to create his unique woodblocks Tajima developed his own ink using powdered color mixed with the plastic medium phenol formaldehyde resin (Bakelite). He uses this ink for a pattern block and then prints again with a water-based ink or dye, which color the areas not printed by his special water-resistant ink.

“Every Tajima work seems to glow from behind, as though it incorporated a fluorescent light shielded by a mysteriously textured fabric. … Tajima’s technique consists of brushing intensely colored dyes over a dark-colored medium, imparting luminosity to the white areas while enriching the basic colors of the print. The textured areas fade off into dark planes, seeming to float on a cool liquid. Thus the fascinating, bubbly shapes are set off by simple, relaxing ground forms. In this end, this rare combination of intricacy and confident simplicity makes Tajima’s work both exciting and reassuring.” -artist, author, and art curator Francis Blakemore

Andrea Rich

Andrea Rich, “Thistle”, 2001, Woodcut on Hosho Paper, 50.8 x 60.1 cm, Edition: 4/30; Collection of Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin

Since 1980, internationally recognized woodcut printmaker and artist Andrea Rich has traveled the world observing wildlife in their natural habitat. Madagascar, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Africa and Europe are some of the places outside North America that she has visited in search of interesting subjects. She then designs her drawing based upon personal observations in the field, carves and hand-pulls prints in her studio in Santa Cruz California.

A typical print requires ten to twenty blocks. Working in the studio full time, a print could take two or three weeks to design and carve the blocks, and another two weeks to press as many as 20 colors on each print. Editions of her work generally number 30 or less.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Woodcut Prints by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年; also named Taiso Yoshitoshi 大蘇芳年) was a Japanese artist who lived from 1839-1892. He is widely recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. Yoshitoshi is also regarded as one of the form’s greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.

By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, Yoshitoshi almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.

His life is perhaps best summed up by John Stevenson: “Yoshitoshi’s courage, vision and force of character gave ukiyo-e another generation of life, and illuminated it with one last burst of glory.”

—John Stevenson, Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1992