Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni
About This Series
This grouping under the title Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni belongs to Shiko Munakata's most celebrated cycle, the twelve standing figures of the bodhisattvas Monju and Fugen flanking the ten foremost disciples of the historical Buddha, on which the artist's international reputation was built. First conceived in 1939 in the figural manner he had developed in the early 1930s after his decisive turn from oil painting to woodblock, the cycle was carved and recarved across the 1940s and 1950s, the destruction of original blocks during the war years requiring renewed work, until the definitive set established Munakata as the postwar Japanese printmaker most identified with Buddhist subject matter and earned him the Print Prize at the 1955 Sao Paulo Biennale and the Grand Prize at the 1956 Venice Biennale. Each disciple is set frontally in a tall columnar format, the body filling the sheet with a calligraphic line carved directly into yamazakura cherry, the densely worked ground filled with the swirling marks and seal-script inscriptions of the disciple's name in Munakata's idiosyncratic hand. Impressions are pulled in sumi on washi without color blocks, and many are completed by uragashin verso-coloring, in which mineral pigments brushed onto the back of the translucent paper diffuse forward through the sheet to register as soft tints of vermilion, indigo, and ochre behind the saturated black. Impressions of the cycle are documented in the Munakata Shiko Memorial Hall, the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and other principal collections of twentieth-century Japanese print.
Prints in This Series (1)
Frequently Asked Questions
This grouping under the title Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni belongs to Shiko Munakata's most celebrated cycle, the twelve standing figures of the bodhisattvas Monju and Fugen flanking the ten foremost disciples of the historical Buddha, on which the artist's international reputation was built. First conceived in 1939 in the figural manner he had developed in the early 1930s after his decisive turn from oil painting to woodblock, the cycle was carved and recarved across the 1940s and 1950s, the destruction of original blocks during the war years requiring renewed work, until the definitive set established Munakata as the postwar Japanese printmaker most identified with Buddhist subject matter and earned him the Print Prize at the 1955 Sao Paulo Biennale and the Grand Prize at the 1956 Venice Biennale. Each disciple is set frontally in a tall columnar format, the body filling the sheet with a calligraphic line carved directly into yamazakura cherry, the densely worked ground filled with the swirling marks and seal-script inscriptions of the disciple's name in Munakata's idiosyncratic hand. Impressions are pulled in sumi on washi without color blocks, and many are completed by uragashin verso-coloring, in which mineral pigments brushed onto the back of the translucent paper diffuse forward through the sheet to register as soft tints of vermilion, indigo, and ochre behind the saturated black. Impressions of the cycle are documented in the Munakata Shiko Memorial Hall, the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and other principal collections of twentieth-century Japanese print.
The Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni series contains 2 prints, created by Shiko Munakata.
The Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni series was created by Shiko Munakata (棟方志功).
We currently have 1 of 2 known prints from the Two Bodhisattvas and Ten Great Disciples of Buddha Sakyamuni series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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