Biography
Rika Saito (齋藤里香, born 1977) is a Japanese woodcut printmaker based in Tokyo. Working primarily in colour woodcut, she is an established participant in the College Women's Association of Japan (CWAJ) Print Show, the principal annual showcase of contemporary Japanese printmaking. Her standing within that program is reflected in her square woodcut 'Amethyst,' which was gathered among the grand-prize prints for CWAJ's sixtieth-anniversary retrospective.
Saito favours the square format that has become characteristic of much contemporary Japanese woodcut, where the balanced proportions emphasise compositional equilibrium over the directional thrust of a vertical or horizontal sheet. She has continued to show her work in Tokyo — including a two-person exhibition at Gallery Natsuka in 2023 — and recent woodcuts such as 'Near and Far #1' pursue quiet spatial propositions about how subjects in a single scene can be at once close to the viewer and distant from one another.
The CWAJ Print Show, held in Tokyo since its founding in 1956, remains the central selection-juried showcase for contemporary printmaking in the region; its 2025 edition was the sixty-eighth. Saito belongs to the steady-producing Tokyo woodcut cohort whose practice is anchored to that yearly cycle.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1977
- Nationality
- 🇯🇵Japan
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 1
Frequently Asked Questions
Rika Saito (齋藤里香, born 1977) is a Japanese woodcut printmaker based in Tokyo. Working primarily in colour woodcut, she is an established participant in the College Women's Association of Japan (CWAJ) Print Show, the principal annual showcase of contemporary Japanese printmaking. Her standing within that program is reflected in her square woodcut 'Amethyst,' which was gathered among the grand-prize prints for CWAJ's sixtieth-anniversary retrospective.
Rika Saito was active born in 1977. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Rika Saito'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.