Fragments III

A 1993 lithograph from Imada's early career in London, produced not long after she completed her undergraduate degree at Tokyo Zokei University in 1988 and predating her wider public identification with mokuhanga. The Fragments series, of which this is the third iteration, draws on the dialogue between abstraction and the natural world that runs throughout her practice. Lithography allows for painterly tonal gradations and fine granular textures that woodblock cannot easily achieve, and Imada used it during this period to develop ideas about layering and partial views that would later inform her woodblock and installation work. Tagged as Nature and Abstract, the print likely composes organic elements—plant forms, seed pods, leaves, or geological textures—into a pictorial field where individual objects dissolve into a broader rhythmic surface. The work sits at a formative moment when Imada was integrating Japanese printmaking sensibilities with the lithographic and painterly methods available in British art schools of the early 1990s.