Mt. Blanc, Shôwa period, dated 1960

Mt. Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps and in Europe, appears in this 1960 Munakata woodblock — evidence of his extensive international travel following his 1956 Venice Biennale triumph. Munakata viewed the European landscape with the same direct, astonished attention he brought to all subjects: no mediation through tradition or artistic convention, just the immediate encounter between eye and mountain and the print knife responding. The alpine peak translated through Munakata's hand would carry none of the picturesque tradition of Western landscape painting but the raw energy of direct confrontation with a massive natural fact.