-
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Image courtesy of
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Description
This untitled Kawanabe Kyosai woodblock print represents one of the many single-sheet compositions the artist produced throughout his career for urban Edo-Tokyo audiences familiar with his wit and technical bravura. Kyosai's composition often exploits negative space aggressively — a single crow against an open sky, a demon mid-leap above a blank ground — allowing the printed line to carry the full expressive weight of the image without tonal elaboration. The washi sheet, likely printed in a standard oban or chuban format, would bear the evidence of careful baren-polishing across each colour block, producing the even ink penetration needed for the flat, saturated areas of colour typical of his graphic work.