A California landscape combining palm trees, distant mountains, and intervening bushes — a configuration recognizable as the East Bay terrain visible from Berkeley. The print was made at the Kala Art Institute, a Berkeley print studio that hosts visiting and resident artists working across intaglio, lithography, and relief methods. The subject sits within the meisho-e tradition of named-place prints, transposed from Edo-period travel views to a contemporary American setting. Stacking palms against mountain ridges produces layered color planes, each likely cut as a separate block and registered with kentō notches at the sheet edges. The spatial logic — foreground plants, flattened middle ground, distant peaks — echoes compositional strategies used by Hokusai in his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and by Hiroshige in his Tokaido series, though the local subject and contemporary palette mark the print as Spitzack's own contribution to American mokuhanga landscape.
Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
1940
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
Boshu Taikai
1925
Color woodblock print; oban
September 1931
Color woodblock print; oban
"Berkeley ca" California bay area woodcut print fine art printmaking contemporary art made at the kala art institute woodblock of palm trees mountains bushes by contemporary American artist Charles Spitzack was created by Charles Spitzack.
"Berkeley ca" California bay area woodcut print fine art printmaking contemporary art made at the kala art institute woodblock of palm trees mountains bushes by contemporary American artist Charles Spitzack depicts seascapes.