Mountain

A third mountain print, indicating the persistence of the subject across Ono's working years. The composition probably opens the field beyond a single peak — perhaps a chain of overlapping ridges, or a near-and-far arrangement that uses overlapping color blocks to suggest atmospheric recession without conventional perspective. [Sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) landscape practice favored such reductive compositional logic: instead of the descriptive recession found in [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga), recession is conveyed by the stacking of carved planes. The visible woodgrain of the cherry or katsura block, the slight registration shifts inherent to hand printing, and the absorbency of the [washi](/glossary/washi) support each contribute to the print's character. Ono's parallel work as a historian of the creative print movement informed his own practice, and his later landscapes show the considered formal choices of an artist who had spent decades documenting the medium's development from within.