Form 81b

The title Form 81b indicates a numbered entry within a sequence of formal studies, a serial approach that several sosaku-hanga artists adopted as they moved toward abstraction in the postwar decades. Working under the jiga-jikoku-jizuri principle, Shinagawa carved and printed each block himself, and works in this vein typically foreground the inherent qualities of the medium: the trace of the woodgrain pulled through pigment, the slight unevenness left by hand-pressing with the baren, and the absorbency of washi. The numbered title removes narrative reading and asks the viewer to attend to shape, edge, and the relation of inked field to paper. Pieces like this place Shinagawa within the broader trajectory of mid-century Japanese printmaking, where artists such as Onchi Koshiro and Saito Kiyoshi had established abstraction as a serious vocabulary for mokuhanga. While the bulk of Shinagawa's catalogue concerns thatched farmhouses and rural scenery, the formal studies show his willingness to test the same handmade process against non-representational ends.