The Peace and Solitude of Shiro Kasamatsu's Prints

By 1920, Japanese prints were experiencing a Renaissance with collectors, and the hunt was on to collect new artists. A movement developed called 'Shin Hanga' (or New Prints), and artists in this movement brought into prominence the Japanese woodcut, which depicted landscape and figurative. The artist Shiro Kasamatsu is considered one of the top Shin Hanga style artists of this era. He was born in the Asakusa section of Tokyo to a middle class family in 1896, and throughout his career he produced nearly three hundred original prints. As you will see his work is superb and the effect upon seeing his images makes one want to commune with Nature.

Kasamatsu started his art studies as a child, and in 1911 he became a student of Kaburagi Kiyokata, a master of the bijin-ga genre. He concentrated mainly on landscapes. Kasamatsu began to design woodblock prints for the popular print publisher Watanabe in 1919, whom he worked with until WWII. A lot of Kasamatsu’s blocks were lost in the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake and prints from that period are very hard to come by. In 1936, he was one of several Japanese artists included in a major exhibition of shin hanga printmaking at the Toledo Museum of Art.

From 1952-1960 he published over one hundred prints with a Kyoto publisher, called Unsodo. In the 1960s he began to print his own blocks in the Sosaku Hanga style and he continued to make prints, but he did not choose to promote them with a publisher. His work took a personal turn and he made the work out of his love for the medium and the subject.

Western collectors have been especially attracted to his landscapes which depict traditional Japanese life and landmarks. They have a romantic feel to them, and remind the viewer of some of the work of James McNeill Whistler’s paintings and prints. Shirō was influenced by Hiroshige’s ukiyo-e techniques to draw in the viewer and give an image depth. He became famous for his nighttime scenes in the rain and snow.

I think what attracted me to Shirō's prints initially was his simplicity and quietness. A peacefulness exudes from his works and that continues to attract print collectors today. The prices for his work are amazingly

affordable, and one would be wise to pick up a few for his/her inked up collection. There are several site online where you can look at and purchase his work for a song. Enjoy, my inked up friends....

Taiwan’s LIAO SHIOU-PING : Where East Meets West

LIAO SHIOU-PING was born in Taiwan in 1936, the son of a civil engineer. As a child, he would often study architectural blueprints spread across his father’s desk. His family lived near Taipei’s famous Longshan Temple and it helped formed strong influences upon his artwork.

The name Shiou-Ping Liao is practically synonymous with printmaking in Taiwan. Dedicated to promoting modern Taiwanese printmaking, Liao has made significant contributions to the development of modern printmaking in Taiwan and China. Liao’s art education started at the National Taiwan Normal University. In 1959, he moved to Tokyo, Japan to study at the Tokyo University of Education (now the University of Tsukuba), and then moved to paris France to study at the Fine Arts Institute of Paris, and Atelier 17. He studied painting, graphic design and printmaking. When he was in Paris, one of his instructors pushed him to find his own style, and he began to explore his Asian roots as a source of inspiration. He drew on memories of the candles, incense and ghost money from Longshan Temple for much of his later work. In the late 1960s he loved to New York where he developed his Symbols series, inspired by Taiwanese culture. Liao believed that “an artist’s style reflects the rhythms of the society that he lives in.”

Liao has devoted himself to creative expression and exploration, developing visual art to express the character, customs, faith, and lifestyles of his people. Liao’s work incorporates Asian sensibilities with a strong graphic design. It is work full of personal symbols and rich in Eastern art colors like red, gold and black; describing a longing for harmony, balance and beauty. He has found a way to bridge Eastern and Western ideas, techniques, and formats, creating a series of works of unique symbols which derive from inscriptions on ancient bronze, drawings of antique ceramics, and Chinese religious, folklore art and gates which reflect secular and divine connections.

In the mid 1970s, Liao returned to Taiwan where he bagan to teach at the National Taiwan Normal University. He developed a textbook on printmaking, The Art of Printmaking, which is still the Bible of printmaking techniques in Asia. He later taught in Tokyo and the US. In the 1990s, he spent time in mainland China teaching western printmaking techniques and spreading an enthusiasm for the medium. Liao’s wife unforeseen death in 2002 inspired his Dreams series where he conveys the duality of yin and yang, life and death, through images of outstretched hands and ghost money.

During his career, Liao Shiou-ping has held more than 70 solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, Tokyo and many other cities around the world. His work can be found in the following permanent collections:
The British Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
the National Museum of Modern Art(Tokyo)
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
The Shanghai Museum

Awards:
Recipient of the Nation Cultural Award and National Award for Arts, earning the title of “father of modern Taiwanese printmaking” for his outstanding artistic achievements.
Co-Founder of the Prix de Paris fund to provide support for young artists to study abroad.