○ (Red)

○ (Red) belongs to Yoshihara's late circle series, the body of work that occupied him from the early 1960s until his death and that he produced in parallel with his leadership of the Gutai Art Association. Executed in silkscreen rather than oil, the print translates a single hand-drawn red circle onto the sheet against an unmodulated ground, retaining the gestural irregularities of the brushed contour while the screen process flattens the colour into a uniform field. The motif draws on the Zen ensō tradition of the single brushed circle, but Yoshihara approached it as a problem of pure form rather than as a calligraphic exercise: he was preoccupied with the impossibility of producing two identical circles, and with the way a closed ring concentrates attention on its interior void. The 1969 dating places this sheet near the end of his career, after Gutai had gained international recognition through exhibitions in Paris, New York, and Turin, and reflects his wider movement from oil painting on canvas into editioned print media during his final decade.