Southwest

The title "Southwest" almost certainly references Yunnan province in southwestern China, the rural mountainous region near Tibet where Qian first practiced printmaking by hand. Reduction-cut woodblock printing — also called the "suicide" method — requires the artist to carve, print, then carve again into the same single block, progressively destroying the matrix as each successive color layer is laid down; the final block holds only the last carved state, and no further impressions can be drawn. The image likely presents a layered composition built from successive color states, possibly evoking the topography, light, or atmosphere of the southwestern Chinese landscape that grounded Qian's early work, or treating the term abstractly as a directional or compositional cue. Within his broader body of work, "Southwest" registers as a return to origins: the place that catalyzed his printmaking practice surfacing as subject within a technique that, by definition, cannot be reprinted from a recovered block.