Past

Date:: 1950
Medium:: Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Dimensions:: 44.1 × 35.6 cm
Edition:: Self-printed
Source:: Minneapolis Institute of Art

Typical Price

Exceptional composition by the father of Japanese abstract printmaking: $10,000–$50,000
Fine signed Onchi print: $3,000–$15,000
Good condition example: $1,000–$5,000

Description

"Past" of 1950 engages Onchi's characteristic interest in time as a subject — not the future or the present but the weight of accumulated experience that constitutes a personal past. Printed two years after Japan's formal end of occupation, in the early period of reconstruction, the work carries the period's complex relationship to the immediate past: the need to acknowledge what had happened while finding a path forward. The specific formal character of the composition — its color, spatial structure, and mark-quality — embodies Onchi's rendering of this temporal experience.