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- 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.
More Prints by Kawanabe Kyosai

Tenpôzan in Osaka: Viewing Children's Sumo (Naniwa Tenpôzan kodomo sumô shôran), from the series Scenes of Famous Places along the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô meisho fûkei), also known as the Processional Tôkaidô (Gyôretsu Tôkaidô), here called Tôkaidô
1863
Woodblock print

Kyosai, Royal Academy, London, FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING
2022
Original Museum Lithographic Exhibition Poster

from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu)
Woodblock print

Gontazaka, from the series Scenes of Famous Places along the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô meisho fûkei), also known as the Processional Tôkaidô (Gyôretsu Tôkaidô), here called Tôkaidô meisho no uchi
Woodblock print
Frequently Asked Questions
- was created by Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎).