Three Gourds (Kabocha)

Three gourds — kabocha, a Japanese term for winter squash — are rendered in Hiratsuka's 1963 woodblock with the direct naturalism of his still life subjects. The three gourds' rounded forms are treated as a compositional problem: how to arrange three similar volumes in a picture plane. His solution is characteristically direct, the gourds' surfaces conveyed through varied knife strokes that capture the vegetable's ribbed texture.