Abstract

A second untitled abstract sheet reflecting Kitaoka's sustained interest in non-figurative composition after his exposure to American printmaking during his 1954–55 Rockefeller-funded residency in New York. Where traditional ukiyo-e relied on key-block outlines, sosaku-hanga abstracts of this period dispense with line entirely, building the image through stacked color blocks, registered with kentō marks, and exploiting the absorbency of kōzo washi to produce subtle tonal shifts within each printed area. Kitaoka often paired hard-edged geometric forms with passages of visible woodgrain, allowing the matrix itself to function as texture rather than disguising it. Such prints align his work with contemporaries like Kiyoshi Saitō and Gen Yamaguchi, who treated the woodblock as a vehicle for modernist abstraction while retaining the material vocabulary — washi, sumi, mineral pigments, baren burnishing — of the inherited Japanese tradition.