Naples

A city view of Naples, part of Ono's group of Italian prints. Without specifying a single landmark in its title, the composition likely takes in a broader urban prospect — bay, waterfront, and built-up city — rather than a discrete monument. Mokuhanga is well suited to this kind of synoptic cityscape: large flat areas for water and sky, a key block carrying the silhouettes of architecture, and color blocks layered to build mass without modeling. Ono's Naples prints sit within the wider postwar phenomenon of Japanese creative-print artists travelling abroad and applying the conventions of meisho-e — the named-place print — to European cities. Where the early-twentieth-century shin-hanga publishers had standardized a polished color treatment of foreign subjects, Ono works in the sosaku-hanga register, with self-carved blocks and visible toolmarks. Within his career arc, the Naples prints mark the international, atmospheric phase that succeeded his prewar industrial subjects without abandoning his interest in cities as lived environments.