Snow (Yuki)

"Snow (Yuki)" — the hand-colored woodblock print from 1958 — captures snow not as landscape detail but as the subject itself: the quality of snowfall, the weight and silence of a world covered in white. Hand-coloring allowed Munakata to add warmth to the typically monochromatic subject, perhaps suggesting the pale blue shadows that snow casts or the slight warmth of light filtering through cloud. The color choices in a hand-colored snow print are significant decisions — what color is snow when you look at it directly? Munakata's answer would be characteristically personal and direct.