Chigusa
Signed: Artist's seal on all prints
Editor:Yamada Naosaburo, Unsodo.
First edition: 1899
Oban yoko-e: 24 x 35,5 cm
Painter and designer, Kamisaka Sekka has been one of the most important Japanese artist who brought the traditional aesthetic in western world. Sekka came from a samurai family - his father was in service at the imperial palace in Kyoto - and studied art during a very delicate period of Japanese history: the transition between the old feudal system of the Edo period to the modern capitalistic one of the Meiji restauration. It has been a traumatic era for all Japanese people and it had relevant effects on artists and their works. In fact they had to choose betweeen “old” and “new”, between “traditional” and “international”. Sekka choose the road of national traditions and committed himself in all the fields he could. Under the guide of his teacher Kishi Kokei, he decided to follow the art of the Rinpa School, using plain and simple designs. Chigusa is a very representative work by Sekka. Published from February 1899, these prints had a very large success and they had been re-printed also later. Later impressions however do not have the red seal on all of them.
SKU: 183
