Montmartre

Sekino traveled internationally during the 1960s and 1970s, and Paris — particularly the Montmartre quarter on the Right Bank's northern hill — became a recurring subject. Montmartre's narrow stepped streets, the silhouette of Sacre-Coeur, and the artist studios and cafes that had drawn earlier generations of Japanese painters and printmakers including Foujita provided material for Sekino's graphic vocabulary. The mokuhanga technique applied to a European subject demonstrates the sosaku-hanga movement's willingness to extend the carved block beyond Japanese themes; the result is a hybrid object, Western imagery rendered through a Japanese craft tradition. Sekino likely emphasizes the Parisian streetscape's architectural rhythms — sloping roofs, chimney pots, narrow facades — through the flat color planes and decisive contour drawing typical of his city scenes. The print joins other foreign-subject works in his oeuvre that document his encounters abroad, expanding the geographic reach of postwar Japanese printmaking.