Biography
Fabiola Gil Alares is a Spanish mokuhanga printmaker, teacher, and author who is one of the principal figures responsible for the contemporary expansion of Japanese woodblock practice in the Spanish-speaking world. Birth and death dates have not been published in the available English-language sources, although Spanish gallery copy places her practice as based in Zaragoza, in Aragón, where she runs an independent xylography studio (Estudio Fabiola Gil) dedicated to the mokuhanga technique. Her training was acquired through extended periods of study in England and in Japan, the latter principally through her residency and observational work at Mokuhankan in Tokyo, the publishing house and workshop founded by David Bull in 2011 that has functioned across the past decade as one of the most important informal training environments for non-Japanese mokuhanga practitioners. Mokuhankan Conversations documents her 2019 visit there, in which she demonstrated the use of carbon paper as a tracing aid in the carving stage — a small technical contribution that is characteristic of her interest in adapting workshop method for self-taught and student practitioners. Her best-known contribution to the medium is her book MokuHanga: Manual ilustrado de xilografía japonesa, published in 2020 by Anaya Multimedia and reissued in an expanded special edition by Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza in 2023. The book runs to more than two hundred colour pages and includes contributions from David Almazán (the University of Zaragoza Japanese-art specialist) and the master printer Gōto Hidehiko, with paper documentation supplied by the Awagami Factory in Tokushima Prefecture, and it has become — as the trade press and the Spanish library system both acknowledge — the principal reference on mokuhanga method in any language other than Japanese and English. She presented the 2021 special edition of the book at the FIG Bilbao International Print Festival, and the volume is stocked by McClain's Printmaking Supplies in the United States as part of its short reference list of mokuhanga books. Beyond the book, her studio practice includes original editions in a graphic, narrative idiom — flat colour areas, decorative outlines, and a romantic visual register that her commentators have likened to children's-book illustration as much as to traditional kachō-e — and her teaching activity covers regular workshops at the Fundación BilbaoArte and the De la mancha al moku-hanga programme. She has been a recurring presence on Andre Zadorozny's mokuhanga podcast The Unfinished Print, which has done much to make the Spanish mokuhanga community visible internationally. Her exhibition history within the dedicated mokuhanga circuit includes participation in the printmaking activity organized around the International Mokuhanga Conferences, and she is among the European practitioners regularly cited in writing on the post-2010 mokuhanga revival. Museum holdings have not been comprehensively documented; the principal repository for the book and its accompanying study editions is the University of Zaragoza, and her place in the contemporary record is best characterized as that of an author-teacher whose pedagogical reach in the Spanish language is currently without peer in the medium.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇪🇸Spain
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 6
Frequently Asked Questions
Fabiola Gil Alares is a Spanish mokuhanga printmaker, teacher, and author who is one of the principal figures responsible for the contemporary expansion of Japanese woodblock practice in the Spanish-speaking world. Birth and death dates have not been published in the available English-language sources, although Spanish gallery copy places her practice as based in Zaragoza, in Aragón, where she runs an independent xylography studio (Estudio Fabiola Gil) dedicated to the mokuhanga technique. Her training was acquired through extended periods of study in England and in Japan, the latter principally through her residency and observational work at Mokuhankan in Tokyo, the publishing house and workshop founded by David Bull in 2011 that has functioned across the past decade as one of the most important informal training environments for non-Japanese mokuhanga practitioners. Mokuhankan Conversations documents her 2019 visit there, in which she demonstrated the use of carbon paper as a tracing aid in the carving stage — a small technical contribution that is characteristic of her interest in adapting workshop method for self-taught and student practitioners. Her best-known contribution to the medium is her book MokuHanga: Manual ilustrado de xilografía japonesa, published in 2020 by Anaya Multimedia and reissued in an expanded special edition by Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza in 2023. The book runs to more than two hundred colour pages and includes contributions from David Almazán (the University of Zaragoza Japanese-art specialist) and the master printer Gōto Hidehiko, with paper documentation supplied by the Awagami Factory in Tokushima Prefecture, and it has become — as the trade press and the Spanish library system both acknowledge — the principal reference on mokuhanga method in any language other than Japanese and English. She presented the 2021 special edition of the book at the FIG Bilbao International Print Festival, and the volume is stocked by McClain's Printmaking Supplies in the United States as part of its short reference list of mokuhanga books. Beyond the book, her studio practice includes original editions in a graphic, narrative idiom — flat colour areas, decorative outlines, and a romantic visual register that her commentators have likened to children's-book illustration as much as to traditional kachō-e — and her teaching activity covers regular workshops at the Fundación BilbaoArte and the De la mancha al moku-hanga programme. She has been a recurring presence on Andre Zadorozny's mokuhanga podcast The Unfinished Print, which has done much to make the Spanish mokuhanga community visible internationally. Her exhibition history within the dedicated mokuhanga circuit includes participation in the printmaking activity organized around the International Mokuhanga Conferences, and she is among the European practitioners regularly cited in writing on the post-2010 mokuhanga revival. Museum holdings have not been comprehensively documented; the principal repository for the book and its accompanying study editions is the University of Zaragoza, and her place in the contemporary record is best characterized as that of an author-teacher whose pedagogical reach in the Spanish language is currently without peer in the medium.
Fabiola Gil Alares's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Fabiola Gil Alares is a contemporary printmaker working in the mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock) tradition. Their work contributes to the living tradition of Japanese woodblock printing. Prices for contemporary mokuhanga prints range from $100 for smaller works to $1,500 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $180–$600 range. The global mokuhanga community has been growing, with increasing exhibition opportunities and collector interest. Contemporary mokuhanga represents an affordable entry point for collectors.
