Child In Aizu

This print belongs to Saito's celebrated Aizu series, drawn directly from his memories of growing up in snow country in Fukushima Prefecture. Saito typically rendered the children of Aizu as bundled, rounded silhouettes — small figures wrapped in winter padding, standing against expanses of unprinted washi that suggest deep snow. Compositionally, his Aizu children are reduced to a few essential masses: a dark coat, a pale face, a band of background. As a sosaku-hanga artist, Saito carved and printed his own blocks, and this print likely shows the deliberate mokume (woodgrain) texture he became known for, where the natural pattern of the cherry block reads through the inked areas as a record of the wood itself. The Aizu children sequence, begun in the late 1940s and continued throughout his career, established Saito's international reputation and contributed to the Grand Prix he received at the 1951 São Paulo Biennial.