Princess showing upper arm

"Princess showing upper arm" — this 1958 woodblock print in ink on paper captures one of Munakata's characteristic female figures: a woman (here titled "princess") in a pose that combines dignity with an unexpected gesture of disclosure. The raised or revealed arm introduces a note of movement and intimacy into what might otherwise be a hieratic frontal figure. Munakata's women — which he carved throughout his career in increasing numbers — were simultaneously decorative and urgent, their simplified forms carrying the same fierce energy as his Buddhist figures while being entirely rooted in the human and sensual.