Poème

Medium:: Woodblock print
Edition:: Self-printed
Source:: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

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

"Poème" — without a number, suggesting either an early work before the series was established or a work outside the formal numbered sequence — represents Onchi's use of the French poetic term as a title category for visual works aspiring to the compressed, emotionally intense quality of lyric poetry. The "Poème" works shared with his "Lyrique" and "Lyric" series the ambition of translating poetic feeling into visual form, treating the print as a made object capable of the same concentrated emotional charge as a short poem.