Untitled

Manfred Egger's untitled mokuhanga, included in the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference juried exhibition in Nara, exemplifies contemporary engagement with the Japanese water-based woodblock technique by a European practitioner. The IMC was founded in 2011 to support the international study and dissemination of mokuhanga, and its juried exhibitions provide a primary venue for non-Japanese artists to present work alongside Japanese counterparts. The 2021 edition's emphasis on sumi—the carbon ink central to East Asian visual culture—encouraged exhibited prints to explore monochrome density, gradient through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi), and the textural interaction between ink and [washi](/glossary/washi). Egger, working from Austria, contributes to an established European mokuhanga community whose practitioners trained in Japan, in MI Lab residencies, or with senior teachers abroad, and who exhibit through both IMC events and regional shows. His untitled works avoid the descriptive subject categories of historical Japanese printmaking—[bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga), [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e), [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e)—in favor of contemporary formal investigation, a tendency widely observed across the international mokuhanga field.