Iris No 20 — 花菖蒲 No 20

One of the earliest numbered entries in Sugiura Kazutoshi's iris series, this print documents the genesis of an artistic project that would eventually encompass more than one hundred and sixty individual compositions devoted to the Japanese garden iris. At No. 20 the formal vocabulary is still being established: the relationship between the iris bloom and its vertical leaf structure, the use of reserve areas to suggest light, and the spatial logic of the composition relative to its borders. The series as a whole constitutes one of the most sustained single-subject explorations in postwar Japanese printmaking.