Altamira

The print likely renders imagery drawn from the Paleolithic cave paintings at Altamira in northern Spain — bison, deer, or handprint motifs — translated into the carved-and-printed language of mokuhanga. The slug element "saru" (monkey) suggests Takeda may have inserted a primate figure into the prehistoric tableau, a characteristic act of conceptual mischief consistent with the satirical sensibility that won him the Bungei-Shunju Cartoon Award in 1976. Working in woodblock, Takeda would have exploited the medium's graphic flatness to mimic the silhouetted, outline-driven quality of cave imagery, with the grain of the block standing in for the stone wall's irregular surface. Bokashi gradation could soften edges to suggest weathered pigment or torchlight. The piece belongs to a strain of his output that places motifs from world art history into dialogue with Japanese craft traditions, treating the print not as a reproduction but as a cross-cultural visual pun. His sculpture training at Tama Art University informs the figural weight even within this deliberately archaic flatness.