Sunflower No 1

The first entry in what appears to be a sunflower series by Sugiura Kazutoshi turns his layered printmaking technique toward a flower whose dramatic scale and solar associations provide a striking contrast to the more refined botanical subjects of his iris and camellia series. The himawari (sunflower) has been a subject in Japanese art since the Meiji period, when Western flowers became fashionable, and its bold circular form and strongly directional growth offer Sugiura different compositional possibilities than the more complex structures of the iris and peony. The gold-leaf application that characterizes his technique suits the sunflower's inherent solar character.