Face

Face is a single-subject study of the kind sosaku-hanga artists often used to test the descriptive limits of carved line. Reducing the human head to its essential structure — the oval of the skull, the placement of eyes, nose, and mouth — was a recurring exercise across the creative-print movement, paralleling work by Munakata Shiko and Hagiwara Hideo in the same generation. Shinagawa, who carved and printed every block himself, would have used the chisel itself as a drawing tool, treating the contour as both a graphic mark and a physical incision in the cherry block. Color in such pieces tends to be restrained, with one or two flat fields registered behind the keyblock, giving the face a mask-like presence on the sheet. Although the great majority of Shinagawa's prints are landscapes and rural architectural studies, his portrait subjects show the same preference for simplified silhouette and quiet color that defines his thatched-roof and stone-wall scenes.