Grasp

Grasp — edition 3 of 50, 20th century — is an early Yamaguchi work in color woodblock that uses an act of physical contact as its compositional subject. The gesture of grasping in Yamaguchi's abstract visual language is likely rendered through interlocking forms rather than literal hand depiction: the intersection of shapes that suggests the grip and release of holding. For an artist whose mature work focused on animals and abstracted human figures, "Grasp" suggests an early exploration of the expressive possibilities of physical gesture in the woodblock medium.