West Beach by Eva Pietzcker - Davidson Galleries

West Beach is the smaller companion to Pietzcker's larger version of the same coastal scene, likely cut from separate blocks rather than reduced photographically. The image presents a stretch of shoreline with the sea meeting the land, a subject she returns to throughout her landscape practice. Bokashi gradation handles the sky and the meeting line of water and sand, where pigment is brushed onto the block in a tapered application before printing onto dampened washi. The smaller format encourages a more concentrated reading of the scene than the larger print, with the eye held closer to the visual plane. Coastal subjects place Pietzcker within a long Japanese tradition of seascape prints stretching from Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji through the shin-hanga seascapes of Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi. As a Berlin-based printmaker working in mokuhanga since the early 2000s, she carries this lineage into Northern European subject matter, applying Japanese technique to the geography of her own travels.