Portrait of Shiko Munakata

"Portrait of Shiko Munakata" from 1968 — whether self-portrait or portrait by another hand — captures the artist in his mature phase, three years before his death in 1975. Munakata's self-portraits had a particular quality: he looked at himself with the same direct, unsparing attention he brought to all his subjects, the face rendered not as a flattering likeness but as a presence of concentrated energy. By 1968, the famously thick-lensed glasses, the intense concentrated expression, and the stocky physical presence had become iconic — the visible emblem of his artistic identity.