Footpath of Rue du Château

Painted in 1925 in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, Footpath of Rue du Château records a section of the long, slightly winding street that runs east from Montparnasse toward the Porte de Vanves — the same neighbourhood that, in the following decade, would become the meeting-place of Hélion, Calder and the artists of the Abstraction-Création circle. Saeki's view places the pavement and the wall of the corner building across the centre of the canvas, with a single doorway, a few painted advertisements and the distant perspective of the street disappearing behind a passing figure. The composition is built almost entirely from horizontal and vertical accents: the line of the pavement, the line of the wall, the lettering of the signs, all stitched together by the dry, inscribed brushwork that he had developed during the summer's painting around the Rue Brancion. The painting is held by the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama (和歌山県立近代美術館), one of the principal Japanese regional collections of inter-war yōga.