‘Modern Japanese Printmakers’ Celebrates Vibrant Mid-20th-Century Innovation

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as industrialization swelled and advances in science and health paralleled social and economic transformation, artists searched for ways to express the changing times. Fatigued with the traditions and values of conservative society, which increasingly felt at odds with the way the world was heading, artists began to seek new visual languages in painting, architecture, and design.

What started as dalliances with non-academic painting in the late 1800s—think Vincent van Gogh and the Impressionists—burgeoned into a full-throttle movement, especially after World War I. Kasimir Malevich’s “Black Square” (1913), for one, marked a turning point in Western art when he broke down the boundary between representation and abstraction—it’s thought to be the first time an artist made a work that wasn’t of something. After World War II, modernism took off, and its influence on art continues to resonate around the globe.

During the early-to-mid-20th century in Japan, creatives and tastemakers looked to both their own traditions, such as the rich legacy of ukiyo-e, and to the West. Forthcoming from Penguin Random House, Modern Japanese Printmakers: New Waves and Eruptions celebrates the trailblazing artists who innovated unique techniques, merged traditional mediums with new methods, and reveled in experimentation.

As Japan’s consumer culture blossomed in the early 20th century, and society adopted technologies and pop culture influences from abroad, artists also embraced modernity. Takea Hideo, for example, reimagines ukiyo-e imagery into surreal, dreamlike tableaux. And Funsaka Yoshiuke creates playful chromatic experiments using repeated motifs like lemons, black dots, grids, and multi-hued strips of color.

Authored by Malene Wagner, the volume covers the gamut of printmaking techniques, from woodblock and lithograph to silkscreen and monoprints, illuminating the virtually endless ways artists can translate imagery onto paper.

Modern Japanese Printmakers contains more than 100 full-page images and highlights a wide range of practices, from Ay-O’s explosively vibrant, psychedelic compositions to Ruth Asawa’s lithographs exploring the relationship between nature and geometry. Slated for release on January 13, the book is available for pre-order now on Bookshop.

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