Flower in a water glass

A still-life subject rendered in the abstract idiom Yamaguchi developed during the postwar decades of the sosaku-hanga movement. Rather than the literal botanical specificity of traditional kacho-e, this print likely reduces the flower and glass to overlapping geometric or organic shapes, with the transparency of the vessel suggested through layered translucent passages of color rather than line. Yamaguchi was known for working in the sosaku-hanga manner of jiga jikoku jizuri --- self-drawn, self-carved, self-printed --- and frequently used unconventional materials including embedded textures, sand, and irregular block surfaces to interrupt the flat planes traditionally produced by the baren on washi. The water glass motif allowed him to explore one of his recurring concerns: the tension between containment and dissolution, where a contained liquid form blurs the edge between the object and its surroundings. Such intimate-scale subjects sit alongside his landscape abstractions and represent the quieter, more meditative register of his mature output following his international recognition at the 1955 São Paulo Bienal.