Portrait of Negro

This portrait reflects Sekino's interest in subjects encountered through international travel and exhibition, extending his portraiture practice to document individuals outside the Japanese cultural sphere he primarily inhabited. The title uses period-specific terminology; in contemporary usage the subject would be described simply as a portrait of a Black individual. Sekino exhibited widely in the United States and Europe from the 1950s onward, and his portraits of non-Japanese subjects document those encounters. The woodblock medium's capacity for broad tonal simplification and bold line creates a particular formal dynamic when applied to portraiture across cultural difference, and Sekino brought the same attentiveness to individual physiognomy to this subject that characterizes his portraits of Japanese literary and artistic figures. The print participates in the sosaku-hanga tradition of portraiture as a vehicle for direct human observation rather than idealized or typological representation.