Four Seasons
About This Series
Four Seasons gathers Shiko Munakata's woodblock treatments of shiki, the classical Japanese cycle of spring, summer, autumn, and winter that has organized poetry, painting, and decorative art across more than a millennium. Munakata, an Aomori native whose imagery returns insistently to the agricultural calendar and weather of northern Japan, applied his ita-e idiom to the four-seasons subject as both a private exercise in seasonal observation and a commissioned format for screen and album decoration. Each sheet is carved directly into yamazakura cherry without preparatory drawing and printed in sumi on washi in the manner the artist had developed by the late 1930s and refined through the postwar years, the figural or floral motif of the season set against densely carved ground filled with the swirling calligraphic line that is the unmistakable signature of his work. Several impressions are completed by uragashin verso-coloring, in which mineral pigments applied to the back of the translucent paper diffuse forward to register as pale rose, indigo, green, and ochre behind the saturated black ink, evoking the colored grounds of decorative screen painting without the registration of separate color blocks. Although Munakata's international fame rests on the monumental Buddhist cycles for which he received the 1955 Sao Paulo Print Prize, the 1956 Venice Grand Prize, and the 1970 Order of Culture, the more intimate seasonal subjects occupied him throughout his career and articulate the lyrical, calligraphic, and folkloric foundations of his Buddhist work. Impressions of his four-seasons treatments are preserved in the Munakata Shiko Memorial Hall in Aomori, the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, and major American museum collections of postwar Japanese print.
Prints in This Series (1)
Frequently Asked Questions
Four Seasons gathers Shiko Munakata's woodblock treatments of shiki, the classical Japanese cycle of spring, summer, autumn, and winter that has organized poetry, painting, and decorative art across more than a millennium. Munakata, an Aomori native whose imagery returns insistently to the agricultural calendar and weather of northern Japan, applied his ita-e idiom to the four-seasons subject as both a private exercise in seasonal observation and a commissioned format for screen and album decoration. Each sheet is carved directly into yamazakura cherry without preparatory drawing and printed in sumi on washi in the manner the artist had developed by the late 1930s and refined through the postwar years, the figural or floral motif of the season set against densely carved ground filled with the swirling calligraphic line that is the unmistakable signature of his work. Several impressions are completed by uragashin verso-coloring, in which mineral pigments applied to the back of the translucent paper diffuse forward to register as pale rose, indigo, green, and ochre behind the saturated black ink, evoking the colored grounds of decorative screen painting without the registration of separate color blocks. Although Munakata's international fame rests on the monumental Buddhist cycles for which he received the 1955 Sao Paulo Print Prize, the 1956 Venice Grand Prize, and the 1970 Order of Culture, the more intimate seasonal subjects occupied him throughout his career and articulate the lyrical, calligraphic, and folkloric foundations of his Buddhist work. Impressions of his four-seasons treatments are preserved in the Munakata Shiko Memorial Hall in Aomori, the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, and major American museum collections of postwar Japanese print.
The Four Seasons series contains 1 prints, created by Shiko Munakata.
The Four Seasons series was created by Shiko Munakata (棟方志功).
We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Four Seasons series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
Want to rate prints from Four Seasons?
Sign up to start rating