Kotondo

A late kabuki print from Kotondo's restrained postwar output, the work depicts an actor in the full regalia of theatrical performance. As the fourth-generation head of the Torii school, Kotondo occupied a unique position — simultaneously an inheritor of the centuries-old tradition of kabuki imagery and a creator of modern bijin-ga that drew on entirely different aesthetic currents. This print belongs to the former tradition, rendered with the confident line of an artist for whom kabuki was familial territory.