Sawada Tetsuro

Sawada Tetsuro was a twentieth-century Japanese printmaker associated with modern Japanese printmaking (kindai hanga). Born in Hokkaidō in the 1930s, he graduated from the Musashino University of Fine Arts (Musashino Art University) in Tokyo in 1958, where he majored in Western-style painting before turning to printmaking.

Working chiefly in silkscreen and lithography — and also in oil — Sawada became known for a sustained focus on the sky, composing luminous, near-abstract images from broad horizontal bands and subtle gradations of color. His prints entered a number of major public collections, among them the British Museum in London, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts). He remained active until his death in the late 1990s.