Landscape 1940

Unichi Hiratsuka made this landscape print, we don’t know exactly when, but probably with wood blocks. I love the way he's used the grain of the wood to suggest the texture of the landscape. Look at the foreground. See how he’s used vertical strokes to indicate the lushness of the rice field? The ink isn't just sitting on the surface, it's part of the surface. You can almost feel the roughness of the wood. The colour palette is restrained; mostly earth tones, which gives the print a sense of calm and serenity. But then he adds a pop of blue in the mountains in the distance, just enough to keep it interesting. I always think of Arthur Dove when I look at woodcuts. They are so different, and yet both artists managed to distill the essence of a landscape into something essential and deeply felt. Like a poem, it embraces ambiguity over clarity.