Girl in Autumn

The Girl in Autumn print extends Saito's seasonal figure series—children placed within the specific chromatic environment of Japanese autumn, the warm ochres and crimsons of maple providing a backdrop against which the child's figure is defined. The combination of subject and season was familiar in Japanese painting, but Saito's treatment removes any trace of sentimentality through formal severity: the child exists as a geometric volume, the autumn palette a flat field, the relationship between figure and season one of color contrast rather than narrative.