SUBURU (The Pleiades)
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Edition:
- Self-printed
- Source:
- wbp
$500–$5,000. Common prints: $500–$1,500. Key value factors: Kitaoka's refined style has a modest but loyal collector base.
The Pleiades — the star cluster known in Japanese as Subaru (also the name of the famous automobile company that adopted its symbol) — appear in Kitaoka's celestial series as a tight grouping of bright points against the night sky. The Pleiades have been meaningful to cultures worldwide for millennia, and in Japanese they carry associations ranging from agricultural calendars to poetic imagery of cold, clear autumn nights. Kitaoka's version renders the cluster as a formal element within his modernist celestial vocabulary.
Woodblock print
Teradomari no yau
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
SUBURU (The Pleiades) was created by Fumio Kitaoka (北岡文雄).
SUBURU (The Pleiades) depicts night scenes and abstract.
