Hawk

A bird-of-prey study that brings the kacho-e subject into the language of sosaku-hanga rather than the polychrome nishiki-e tradition of Edo-period bird-and-flower prints. In Ono's hands, the hawk is likely carved as a strong, decisive silhouette, with the structure of the wings, tail, and beak cut as planar shapes rather than built up from descriptive linework. The plank grain of the block can be read through broader inked passages, and bokashi may be used sparingly to model the breast or the ground. The image continues the high-contrast graphic discipline Ono developed in his 1930s prints of workers and factories, applied here to a non-urban subject. Within the movement that Ono both practiced and documented as a historian, the hawk sits alongside other animal and bird subjects taken up by Onchi-circle artists who were reworking traditional Japanese motifs through self-drawn, self-carved, and self-printed methods.