Maru Godas

Named for Maru Godas — the Catalan illustrator known for botanical and figurative work in gouache — this mokuhanga print likely takes the form of a portrait or homage between contemporary artists. In the water-based Japanese woodblock tradition that Gil Alares practices, a likeness of this kind is typically resolved through a reduction of the subject to flat planes of pigment, each carried by a separately carved cherry or shina plywood block and registered with kentō marks cut into the corner of every block. The hand-rubbed [baren](/glossary/baren) impression on dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) gives the surface a matte, absorbed quality distinct from lithography or screenprint. Portraiture of fellow creatives is a recurring thread among mokuhanga artists in the Mokumap network, where prints are often exchanged between practitioners. Gil Alares's Zaragoza-based practice connects this Iberian portrait subject to the broader European mokuhanga revival, in which the technique is applied to contemporary social and personal subjects rather than the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) and [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) of its Edo origins.