Lyrique I

Lyrique I belongs to Onchi's ongoing series of abstract compositions in which musical and emotional sensation, rather than recognizable subject, drove the design. The French-derived title — used interchangeably with the Japanese Lyric — signals Onchi's engagement with European modernist thinking, particularly Wassily Kandinsky's writings on the spiritual and synaesthetic dimensions of abstraction, which Onchi knew through translation. Prints in the Lyrique sequence typically combine flat color fields, shaped blocks of grain-printed wood, and irregular forms set into open space, with the figure of the wood itself visible through bokashi gradations and direct impressions of textured surfaces. As a founding figure of sosaku-hanga, Onchi designed, carved, and pulled each impression himself, treating every pull as a distinct work rather than a fixed edition. As the inaugural print of the series, Lyrique I establishes the visual vocabulary — fragmented geometry, layered transparency, hand-rubbed pressure — that he would extend across the subsequent variations.