Litzco Yamamiya

Litzco Yamamiya (born 1958) is a Japanese intaglio printmaker working in Tokyo. Over many years she has developed a body of copperplate etchings that combine several traditional intaglio techniques — aquatint, line etching, lift-ground, soft-ground, and chine-collé — into compositions that read as quiet, atmospheric meditations on space, colour, and form. Her surname is written 山宮 and her given name Ritsuko as 律子, romanised together as Litzco Yamamiya.

Yamamiya is a sustained presence at the annual CWAJ Print Show, the long-running exhibition of contemporary Japanese prints organised by the College Women's Association of Japan. Her 2004 etching Café is among the works held in the Library of Congress's College Women's Association of Japan Print Show Collection — a principal U.S. public record of contemporary Japanese print activity, drawn from prints shown at the CWAJ Print Show.

Her more recent work has moved toward landscape and cosmic themes. The 2024 print Cosmic Mountain (49 × 47 cm), selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025, brings aquatint, etching, lift-ground etching, soft-ground etching, and chine-collé together in a single composition. The layering of these intaglio techniques builds a rich tonal field; chine-collé, in which a thin sheet of toned paper is laminated to the printed sheet, lends the surface a subtle warm cast against the cooler etched line.

Yamamiya's commitment to combining four or five intaglio techniques on a single plate is distinctive within the contemporary Japanese print field, where many artists settle on one or two. Sustained across two decades and tracked through the CWAJ Print Show, her prints follow the long evolution of Japanese intaglio practice from the early 2000s to the present.