Hair

Date:

1930

Medium:

Color woodblock print

Edition:

Self-printed

Source:

Art Institute of Chicago

Typical Price

Rare early experimental work (pre-1940) in excellent condition: $20,000–$80,000
Fine early print from pioneering period: $5,000–$20,000
Good condition early work: $1,500–$6,000

Description

"Hair" of 1930 is one of Onchi's intimate figure studies — the kind of image that existed at the border between his figurative work (portraits, bijin studies) and his emerging abstract sensibility. A woman's hair, rendered in the deep blacks achievable through woodblock printing, becomes an exercise in the abstract qualities of line, mass, and the relationship between figure and ground. By 1930 Onchi was developing the formal vocabulary that would lead to his great abstract series of the 1940s and 1950s, and works like this one show the transition.