Kyo Karasuma

Kyo Karasuma (born 1955, Tokyo) is a Japanese mixed-media printmaker working in mezzotint with collage, gold leaf, and hand-coloring, with a sustained practice based in Tokyo. His selection in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 with 'Tokyo City,' a 57 × 69 cm mezzotint/collage piece incorporating gold leaf and hand-coloring, places him within the established cohort of senior Japanese intaglio printmakers working at the technical boundary between traditional intaglio and mixed-media print.

Karasuma trained under Ikuta Koji, a senior Japanese printmaker. Direct teaching-line affiliation with Ikuta situates Karasuma within a documented Tokyo-area mezzotint pedagogical tradition.

Karasuma is a member of three of the principal Japanese printmaking organizations: Print Saurus International Print Exchange Association of Japan, Japan Art Association, and Japan Print Association. The Print Saurus International Print Exchange Association is a member-directory and exchange-program organization for Japanese printmakers participating in international print exchange — an important channel for Japanese print circulation in the broader international contemporary print circuit. Triple membership (Print Saurus + Japan Art Association + Japan Print Association) is unusual and confirms Karasuma's substantial professional engagement with the Japanese print establishment.

Karasuma's chosen medium combination — mezzotint with collage, gold leaf, and hand-coloring — is technically distinctive. Mezzotint is one of the most demanding intaglio techniques: the entire copper plate is roughened with a rocker tool to produce a velvety dark ground, and the image is created by burnishing back the highlights. The integration of collage elements (typically applied at the post-printing stage), gold leaf application (a traditional Japanese decorative technique transposed onto contemporary print), and hand-coloring produces a one-of-a-kind print rather than a strictly editioned multiple — a register that situates Karasuma at the intersection of contemporary intaglio practice and the traditional Japanese mixed-media decoration tradition.

The title 'Tokyo City' situates the work within the long tradition of Japanese urban-landscape print, running from Hokusai's and Hiroshige's Edo-period scenes of central Tokyo through the postwar urban-landscape work of Onchi Koshiro and the contemporary print celebration of Tokyo's built environment. The mezzotint-with-gold-leaf treatment of a Tokyo subject suggests an evocative rather than documentary approach — the gold leaf in particular operating as both a decorative and symbolic element, reading as light, energy, or atmospheric value.

The 57 × 69 cm sheet size is a substantial mezzotint plate; the rocker-prepared copper required for a plate of this size represents many days of preparatory labor before the first burnishing pass begins. The CWAJ catalog selected 'Tokyo City' for the 2025 online gallery presentation in the 68th edition.