Semi-abstract Nude

Semi-abstract Nude reflects the abstract turn that many sosaku-hanga artists took during the postwar decades, when the creative-print movement absorbed influences from European modernism and the Japanese avant-garde. The figure is reduced to essential contours and volumes rather than rendered anatomically, a treatment well suited to the woodblock's natural inclination toward bold, planar form. Shinagawa would have drawn, carved, and printed the work himself in keeping with his lifelong adherence to jiga, jikoku, jizuri. Color is typically applied in a small number of registered impressions, with the grain of the cherry or katsura block sometimes incorporated into the surface texture. The nude as subject sits apart from his more frequent rural landscapes, demonstrating the breadth of subject matter he engaged with over a career spanning more than seven decades. It aligns him with contemporaries such as Tetsuro Sawada and Yoshitoshi Mori, who similarly explored the human figure in abstract terms.