Horse

A single-horse composition from the body of work that built Nakayama's reputation. From the late 1950s onward he produced horses in repose, in motion, and in groups, treating the animal as a vehicle for the woodblock's particular capacity to register physical force in the carving itself. A solitary horse print of this kind typically isolates the animal against a flat or minimally worked ground, focusing attention on the contour cuts that describe the body — broad sweeping gouges along the back and flank, narrower cuts where the legs meet the ground line, and often a textural treatment of the mane that takes advantage of the woodblock's natural directional grain. Nakayama's horses were not anatomically illustrative in the manner of Western academic studies; they were carved presences, where the bite of the tool into the cherrywood or katsura block remained visible as a graphic event. This single-horse format is the foundational unit of his equine series, with multi-horse compositions and storm scenes built from variations on it.