Fishes (Sakana)

Fishes (Sakana), a color woodblock print from 1958, edition 17 of 50, is among Amano's early career fish subjects — the natural imagery through which he first developed his abstract geometric vocabulary. Fish in the Japanese artistic tradition span everything from carp in garden ponds to the swarming schools of the open sea, and their fluid, repeating forms provide natural material for geometric abstraction. Amano's fish would have been reduced to their essential silhouettes, arranged in compositions that emphasize pattern and movement over descriptive naturalism.