Kiyoshi Saito Woodblock Print Collection: Winter in Aizu

Name: Kiyoshi Saito Woodblock Print Collection: Winter in Aizu
Brand: 斎藤清 / SAITO Kiyoshi
Price: 14000 JPY
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Kiyoshi Saito's "Winter in Aizu" is a collection of woodblock prints that compiles a series of works intermittently produced from 1938 to 1996, with the theme of the snowy landscape of his hometown, Aizu, and is one of the artist's representative series.

In this series, motifs such as thatched-roof houses, bare trees, and quiet villages are repeated, and the 화면 is composed by the strong contrast between white snow and black buildings. Instead of being drawn, the snow is treated as negative space, bringing out its mass and stillness, and combined with the simplified forms, the landscape takes on an abstract quality that departs from realism. The titles also vary, oscillating between "Winter in Aizu," "WINTER IN AIZU," or untitled, and it is characterized by the repetition and variation of composition and viewpoint within the same theme.

For Saito, the winter of Aizu was not merely an object of nostalgia, but a visual structure reconfigured by form and negative space. This work is an attempt to reduce the landscape to a universal image by stripping it down, and it is an important series that demonstrates the culmination of modernism in Japanese woodblock printing.

[Title] Kiyoshi Saito Woodblock Print Collection: Winter in Aizu
[Publisher] Kodansha

[Publication Date] November 20, 1982
[Number of Pages] 169 pages
[Size] Approximately 370*276mm / 2,420g
[Format] Hardcover
[Language] Japanese
[Title Reading] SAITO KIYOSHI HANGASHU AIZU NO FUYU
[Author/Editor] Kiyoshi Saito/Author, Daiichi Shuppan Center/Editor
[Printing] Toppan Printing/Printing, Wada Seihon Kogyo/Binding
[ISBN]
[Condition] Used [4] Average to Slightly Below Average (box slightly damaged, a few pages from endpaper stained, edges tanned and slightly stained)
[Accessories] Box (shipping box missing)
[Featured in] -
[Related Exhibitions] -

Kiyoshi Saito (1907–1997)

Born in Aizubange-machi, Fukushima Prefecture in 1907. Woodblock print artist.
After self-studying painting, he transitioned to woodblock printing in the mid-1930s, and his production became more serious as he was repeatedly selected for the Japan Print Association Exhibition and the Kokuga-kai Exhibition. In 1940, he began producing "Winter in Aizu," which became his representative work and a theme he would repeatedly engage with throughout his life.

After the war, he was active as a member of the Kokuga-kai, and established international recognition after receiving awards at the Salon de Printemps exhibition in 1948 and the São Paulo Biennial in 1951. Thereafter, he held exhibitions and gave指导 in various parts of America and Europe, and was widely introduced overseas. He established his unique woodblock print expression that reconstructs Japanese motifs in a modern way through simplified forms, strong composition, and screens that utilize negative space.

In his later years, he was selected as a Person of Cultural Merit (1995) and received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Fourth Class, in 1981.
He passed away in 1997, the same year that a museum dedicated to him opened in Yanaizu-machi, Fukushima Prefecture.
He is one of the most prominent artists in modern Japanese printmaking.