Aizu in Winter 1938

Kiyoshi Saito made this print, Aizu in Winter, using woodblocks and paper, and it’s all about the dance between what’s there and what isn’t. Look at how he carves away at the wood, leaving these bold, flat shapes. You can almost feel the knife sliding through the grain. There’s a simplicity, but it’s not naive. Take the snow on the rooftops, for example. Saito lets the white paper do the work, but then he adds these dark outlines that make it look like the snow is almost swallowing the houses. It’s a quiet kind of drama, a push and pull between light and dark, presence and absence. This reminds me a little of some of the early American modernists, like Marsden Hartley, who were also playing with simplified forms and a kind of raw honesty. But Saito brings his own sensibility, a Japanese way of seeing that’s both ancient and modern. It’s a reminder that art is always a conversation, a back and forth across time and cultures.