Nude figure of a woman reclining

Nude Figure of a Woman Reclining is a Taisho-era woodblock that explores the Western convention of the reclining nude through the Japanese medium of carved and printed wood. The horizontal composition demanded by the reclining pose stretches across the block, the figure's body creating a landscape of curves and shadows. Tobari approaches the subject with a frankness that the sosaku-hanga movement enabled, free from the coded eroticism of traditional bijin-ga or the constraints of commercial print publishing. The woodblock's grain introduces a textural element absent from the oil paintings and charcoal drawings that typically housed this subject in Western art.