Composition with moon and butterflies

A pairing of two motifs Iwami returned to throughout her career. The moon recalls "Round Shadow No. 1" (1957), the work in the Art Institute of Chicago that established her circular geometry, while butterflies appear across her later compositions as small, detached emblems of brief flight. The print likely combines gold or silver leaf for the lunar disc with deep embossing pressed into dampened [kozo](/glossary/kozo) paper, allowing the moon to register as a raised, light-catching presence rather than a flat printed shape. Translucent pigments and mica powder typically supply atmospheric ground in works of this kind, with the butterflies executed in finer detail through additional smaller blocks. The composition sits within the meditative, reductive register Iwami pursued after abandoning oil painting and figurative work in the late 1950s, when her studies with Onchi shifted toward sustained material experimentation. The combination places the print near the [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) tradition of bird-and-flower imagery while remaining modernist in its handling.