Young Woman looking right

A bust-length portrait of a young woman with her gaze directed to the viewer's right, this print belongs to Saito Kiyoshi's series of figural studies that paralleled his better-known landscape work. Saito's bijin subjects depart sharply from the lineage of Edo-period bijin-ga: rather than elaborately patterned kimono and meticulously rendered hairstyles, he reduces the figure to a simplified silhouette, a few carved facial contours, and broad flat planes of color. The wood grain often shows through the printed areas, a signature feature of his self-printed editions that asserts the materiality of the block. Pairs and series of women in opposing poses — looking left, looking right — were a common compositional strategy across his career, allowing him to explore variations of a single formal idea. Such prints reflect the sosaku-hanga commitment to the artist as sole author of design, carving, and printing.