Portrait Of Onchi Kôshirô

Onchi Kōshirō (1891–1955) was the central organizing figure of the sosaku-hanga movement and Sekino's most important mentor; Sekino joined Onchi's Ichimoku-kai (First Thursday Society) in the 1940s, where the older artist's circle met to discuss and critique new prints. This portrait records that intellectual debt directly. Sekino was already established as a portraitist — his series of writers and cultural figures applied the woodblock medium to a genre traditionally reserved for oil or photograph — and his portraits typically combine a strongly modeled face built from carefully registered tonal blocks with a flatter, more decorative background. The carved line in such portraits is precise but not mechanical, with the baren-burnished surfaces conveying the sitter's character rather than literal likeness alone. The print stands as both personal homage and document of the postwar creative-prints network.