NEW YORK, NY.- Scholten Japanese Art is presenting for its Winter 2024–2025 gallery exhibition a collection of woodblock prints by a group of preeminent Japanese sosaku hanga artists. The show includes self-carved and self-printed works by Shiko Munakata (1903–1975), Jun’ichiro Sekino (1914–1988), Kiyoshi Saito (1907–1997), Toshi Yoshida (1911–1995), and his younger brother, Hodaka Yoshida (1924–2017), along with Hodaka’s wife, Chizuko Yoshida (1924–2017), as well as another set of spouses, Ansei Uchima (1921–2000) and his wife, Toshiko Uchima (1918–2000). The unifying theme of this exhibition is the vital role of each of these artists in “bringing” sosaku hanga to the United States and, in particular, New York. Exposing this uniquely Japanese art form to wider audiences, some created important works during their time in New York, others demonstrated and provided instructions on their techniques and approaches to art in American educational institutions. All selected artists participated in significant exhibitions of their work in New York and elsewhere in the States.

The sosaku hanga movement came to the forefront of Japan’s artistic world in the 1950s, with some of its leading practitioners, including Munakata and Saito, winning widespread recognition through prestigious international awards and with enthusiastic American collectors such as Oliver Statler (1915–2002) and James A. Michener (1907–1997) spreading awareness and appreciation to an ever-growing audience. It was an exciting time for the artists of this movement, who were part of a close community centered in Tokyo, frequently socializing, exchanging ideas, inspiring and educating one another, as well as interacting with artists working in other media, who were enjoying their own creative explorations in other vibrant movements of the time.

The sosaku hanga (lit. “creative print”) movement emerged in the early 20th century as an outgrowth of two trends arising from Japan’s rapid modernization, which was strongly influenced by the West. The production of woodblock prints which traditionally centered around a publisher who commissioned designs from artists and hired professional carvers and printers, essentially controlling all aspects of the production and subsequent sales of the prints, was waning. In embracing the Western artistic approach, which underlined the role of the artist as the sole creator of their work, printmakers began to emphasize the importance of conducting all steps in the creative process by themselves, including the design (jiga, lit. 'self-drawn'), carving (jikoku, 'self-carved'), and printing (jizuri, lit. 'self-printed'). These prints became known as sosaku hanga.

Initially the revitalization of Japanese woodblock printing in the first decades of the 20th century was approached by artists and publishers together exploring a variety of viewpoints and techniques including Western influences. For example, the four founding members of the Japanese Creative Print Association (Nihon Sosaku-Hanga Kyokai) established in 1918 included an etcher and a lithographer, and two of the artists had lived in the West. However, eventually a distinction arose between modern prints produced by publishers, known as shin-hanga (lit. ‘new prints’), versus prints produced entirely by the artists themselves, identified as sosaku hanga. Stylistically, sosaku hanga prints moved away from traditional Japanese aesthetics and tended to lean towards abstract compositions.

As a self-realized genre, sosaku hanga artists published various short-lived magazines and formed associations to promote their work. The Japanese Creative Print Association was the primary organization for like-minded printmakers until it dissolved in 1931, reemerging as the Japan Print Association (Nihon Hanga Kyokai). The artists in this exhibition were members of the association and likewise attended monthly First Thursday Society (Ichimokukai) meetings led by its influential founder, Koshiro Onchi (1891–1955), starting in 1939. At the conclusion of the war, artists worked together to source scarce materials and collaborated on projects. American personnel stationed in Japan, particularly the officers, were an early lifeline for the restoration of the print market.

Sosaku hanga was further promoted by the writer and collector, Oliver Statler, an American civil servant attached to the Occupation who remained in Japan after he was released from service. Statler was an avid collector of contemporary prints and was working on a book in English in the mid-1950s when he met Ansei Uchima, a Japanese-American artist from California who, as an architecture student at Waseda University, had found himself caught in Japan when the Second World War broke out, but stayed after the peace to continue his development as an artist. Statler was in the midst of interviewing leading sosaku hanga artists which would lead to his seminal book, Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn. Fluent in English and Japanese, Uchima became his interpreter and advisor on art techniques, and they continued their collaboration when Statler started writing for the Asahi Evening News.

Uchima’s interactions with the sosaku-hanga artists inspired him to work in the woodblock print medium. Published by Tuttle in 1956, Statler’s book introduced the American public to contemporary Japanese printmakers via an interview format that revealed the person behind the art, an approach that embraced the very tenet of the movement, presenting the artist as the (genius) creator. James Michener echoed Statler’s endorsement and elevated the genre by including sosaku hanga in the copiously illustrated 1959 catalogue of his personal collection of Japanese woodblock prints spanning three centuries and including numerous early ukiyo-e masterpieces.

The multi-generational Yoshida family were pioneers in reinvigorating connections to the American art market in the early post-war period. After Toshi had become the head of the family in 1950, there was a pressing need to boost sales in order to restore the family’s finances, which were depleted following the war. In addition to marketing the work of his famous father, Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950), who had a well-established market in the states prior to the war, Toshi (and his mother Fujio, 1887–1987) had begun experimenting with abstract prints, inspired by his free-spirited brother Hodaka, who was in turn encouraged by his soon-to-be wife, the artist Chizuko Inoue. Although restrictions started to ease in 1948, it was not until after the Occupation officially ended in April 1952 that Japanese were free to travel internationally. In September 1953, Toshi Yoshida was one of the earliest prominent Japanese artists to travel to the States, undertaking a whirlwind tour alone which included visiting approximately thirty museums and university galleries across the country, including a print demonstration at the New School in downtown Manhattan which prompted the Museum of Modern Art to purchase seven Yoshida family works.

Toshi also managed to lay the groundwork for a return trip in February 1955 with his brother Hodaka that coincided with a large exhibition of woodblock prints by the Yoshida Family held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and by The Japan Society in New York. Creative Connections includes an impression of Toshi Yoshida’s white line abstract, American Girl B, a detail of which was used on the cover of the catalogue that was produced to accompany the 1955 traveling exhibition. The brothers remained in the States until July 1955 before continuing to Mexico. They returned again in 1957 with their mother Fujio and Hodaka’s wife Chizuko for an even longer extended tour.

One of the earliest beneficiaries of the American government’s post-war agenda supporting a cultural exchange was Kiyoshi Saito. Saito was the winner of a top prize at the 1951 Sao Paulo International Biennale, news of which catapulted sosaku hanga to the forefront of consciousness among members of the Japanese artistic community. Saito arrived in the States in January 1956 as a guest of the State Department under its International Visitor Program which covered his travel costs and expenses for a three-month stay, during which he visited Seattle, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Houston, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and New York. During his brief stay in New York, from March 25th until April 3rd, coincided with a solo exhibition of his work at The Contemporaries Gallery, Saito met with Douglas Overton, the Executive Director of The Japan Society, and John D. Rockefeller III, as well as Charles B. Fahs of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Earlier that year, Overton had assisted in preparing an exhibition of Modern Japanese Prints which included the work of Saito, at The Contemporaries Gallery at 992 Madison Avenue. The gallery was founded by the artist Margaret Lowengrund (1902–1957) who, by the time of Saito’s solo exhibition, was in the process of securing a three-year grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to fund a not-for-profit printmaking workshop she envisioned with Fritz Eichenberg (1901–1990), a fellow-printmaker on the faculty of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. The workshop would become the Pratt-Contemporaries Graphic Art Center and, in 1959, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded the Center (renamed the Pratt Graphic Art Center) another three-year grant to bring in more foreign artists as instructors. Almost from its inception, The Pratt Graphic Art Center (PGAC) was a beacon for contemporary Japanese print artists to visit New York.

Kiyoshi Saito was able to return to New York in 1962 where the Nordness Gallery on Madison Avenue presented Kiyoshi Saito: Guest Exhibition of Colored Woodcuts. The following month, the PGAC put on a group show, Contemporary Japanese Prints.

A large woodblock print on view in Scholten’s current exhibition, titled New York (B), depicting the dark city skyline against a silver mica sky with bright yellow and purple flowers in the foreground is one of the few works Saito was able to produce relating to his 1962 visit.

In 1958 Jun’ichiro Sekino was invited along with a group of artists and writers by the Rockefeller Foundation and The Japan Society to visit the United States. Sekino travelled extensively, giving lectures and demonstrations at numerous institutions. In New York, the Kennedy Gallery exhibited his works with an exhibition pamphlet authored by Oliver Statler (Jun Sekino: Color Woodcuts, April 11–May 3) and Sekino became the first international artist to serve as a visiting instructor at the PGAC, teaching classes on woodblock printing twice a week from April through July.

Sekino returned again to the States in 1963 as a recipient of a Ford Foundation grant to teach woodblock printing at the University of Washington, Oregon State University, and the University of Oregon. He made a third visit to the United States in the summer of 1969 where he taught at Oregon State University, where his oldest son Junpei was a graduate student in mathematics.

One of the most well-known and highly regarded sosaku hanga artists was the irrepressible Shiko Munakata, who first visited the United States in February 1959 as a guest of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Japan Society, accompanied by his wife and a son. He was internationally acclaimed, having won top prizes at the Venice, Sao Paulo and Lugano International Biennales. Munakata’s tour of the States included lectures and painting demonstrations at universities in Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and several locations around New York. During his stay, Munakata participated in several exhibitions, including a solo show in a gallery in Boston, and another in New York at the Willard Gallery on East 57th Street from March 31–April 25th (the gallery had already staged a solo show of his work in December 1952). Both Willard exhibitions received enthusiastic write-ups in the New York Times, the 1959 review was even accompanied by a photograph of one of Munakata’s prints, Buddha and Water Lily. Also in April, Munakata visited the PGAC, and later that spring he served as a guest instructor and gave calligraphy demonstrations at PGAC-sponsored events. The New York Times Magazine published a feature titled ‘Japanese Visitor’ in their May 24th issue, announcing the opening of the Munakata Gallery by collectors Anne and Murray Jaffe on June 9th at 19 West 46th Street (an irrepressible wonder itself: a mere 12 ½ foot wide 19th century former boarding house squeezed between two hulking mid-town buildings). The photographs captured Munakata with brush in hand as he worked on calligraphic paintings, surrounded by examples of his powerful paintings and woodblock prints. In the late summer, Munakata managed to fit in a summer trip to Europe (visiting Spain, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, and France, where he visited the graves of the Van Gogh brothers at Auvers). Returning from Paris in mid-September, he stayed in New York through October 1959.

The current exhibition includes a pair of prints, Bodhisattva Fugen and Bodhisattva Monju, from Munakata’s most acclaimed series, Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Sakyamuni. Munakata carved the blocks for the series of twelve double-height prints (each measuring approximately 40 inches) in 1939 and in the following year the set won a prize at the Kokugakai (National Art Academy Exhibition). In 1948 Munakata recarved the blocks for the two Bodhisattvas because the originals were lost when his home was destroyed during the bombing of Tokyo. In the mid-1950s the set took top prizes for printmaking at the Sao Paulo (1955) and Venice (1956) Biennales.

Also in 1959, Ansei Uchima returned to the United States, the country of his birth, with his wife Toshiko and their young son and, in 1960, settled in New York, drawn to its role as a cultural center, and spent the rest of their lives there. Uchima’s earlier collaboration on the Statler book and his interactions with the sosaku hanga artists had inspired him to become a printmaker and, by 1959, he had become recognized as a leading figure among the younger generation of sosaku hanga artists. An indication of Uchima’s place among fellow sosaku hanga artists is his inclusion in the 1959 catalog of the Michener collection, Japanese Prints: From the Early Masters to the Modern, featuring a full-page photograph of the large woodblock print, Song of the Seashore.

Ansei and Toshiko had formed friendships with their fellow printmakers, including each of the other artists in the current exhibition. They relaunched their careers in New York, becoming sosaku hanga printmakers in New York and, in the process, importing the medium to the States on a full-time basis and adding to the sosaku hanga legacy as American artists.

Through the 1960s and 1970s and, through 1982, when his career was cut short by illness, Ansei continued to produce a large volume of prints, as well as paintings, pastels and etchings. In addition to producing and exhibiting his art in the States, Ansei served for many years as one of the very few teachers of Japanese printmaking techniques in this country, first at PGAC from 1960 to 1962, and thereafter at Sarah Lawrence College from 1962 to 1982 and Columbia University from 1968 to 1982.

Toshiko’s printmaking career spanned little more than a decade. After 1965, she worked in other media, primarily collages and box assemblages, for which she is better known. In New York, between 1960 and 1965, Toshiko produced a small volume of prints which are relatively scarce today and have, in recent years, begun to attract increased interest. Three of Toshiko’s early prints are included in the Scholten exhibition, including Bridge, from 1965.

In the States and particularly in New York, the Uchimas served as liaisons between the Japanese and American print communities. They kept up the many friendships and relationships they had established in Japan with their fellow printmakers and frequently acted as hosts to those who visited New York and provided valuable assistance to a number of these artists, introducing them to American contacts and helping them exhibit their work. In 1960, Ansei, with Statler and others, helped coordinate the first comprehensive sosaku hanga exhibition (from its origins in the early twentieth century to the present day) at the Art Institute of Chicago, featuring hundreds of works by dozens of artists, including each of the artists in the Creative Connections exhibit. In New York, Ansei played an instrumental role connecting Japanese artists with the PGAC. In 1963, for example, he coordinated a joint exhibition of woodblock prints at PGAC by Hodaka Yoshida and his unrelated contemporary, Masaji Yoshida (1917–1971), both good friends and colleagues of Ansei’s from his days in Japan. In 1966, Ansei and Toshiko coordinated an exhibition at PGAC of the Joryu Hanga Kyokai (Japanese Women Printmakers Association), which Toshiko had co-founded a decade earlier in Tokyo with Chizuko Yoshida and others. The exhibit presented works by substantially all of the major women printmakers associated with sosaku hanga, including Chizuko and Toshiko.

REFERENCES:
The New York Times, “Art Events in the Galleries, Exotic Notes” (Munakata at Willard Gallery), December 7, 1952, p. 363
The Yoshida Studio, A Catalog of Wood-block Prints by the Yoshida Family, 1953-54
The New York Times, “Shiko Munakata’s Work is Displayed at Willard,” by Dore Ashton, April 3, 1959, p. 24
The New York Times, “Japanese Visitor,” The New York Times Magazine, May 24, 1959
Oliver Statler, Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn, 1956
James A. Michener, Japanese Prints from the Early Masters to the Modern, 1959
Anju Uchima, My Parents: A Reflection, in, Uchima Ansei 1921-2000/Uchima Toshiko 1918-2000 (exhibition catalog), Watanuki ltd., 2018, pp. 12-14
Robert and Yoko McClain, Thirty-six Portraits by Sekino Jun’ichiro, 1977
Rhiannon Paget, Saito Kiyoshi: Graphic Awakening, 2021 pp. 8-11
Noriko Kuwahara, Printmaking Exchanges Between Japan and the United States in the Mid-twentieth Century, in, Lauren Rosenblum and Christina Weyl, A Model Workshop, Margaret Lowengrund and the Contemporaries. 2023, p. 80-84
Noriko Kuwahara, Postwar Printmaking Exchanges Between Japan and the United States: 1945-1965, 2024, pp. 307-339