Hollyhock

Dated 1936, Kotozuka's hollyhock (aoi) print engages with a flower of considerable ceremonial significance in Kyoto — the hollyhock is the emblem of the Aoi Festival, one of the city's three great annual festivals, and of the Kamo shrines. The flower's formal associations give even a botanical study of it a cultural weight beyond the natural history of the bloom. Kotozuka renders the tall stalks and large, cup-shaped flowers with the botanical precision and decorative sensibility characteristic of his flower prints.