Winter in Aizu (one figure)

Kiyoshi Saito

Sosaku-Hanga printmaker Kiyoshi Saito began his series of landscape prints titled "Winter in Aizu", his hometown in the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, in 1938 and continued it through 1994, 132 different images based on this theme. The series established his reputation as a printmaker in Japan and then internationally.

This image of a villagerer walking in the street of Aizu in winter uses two blocks, a dark gray and a black. The white is created by the color of the paper. A thick build-up of snow on the roofs lend a pillow-like atmosphere - the viewer can sense the quiet. A barren, sinewy tree intersects the composition at the left

Saito also did other series of Aizu in different seasons. For all of these these series Saito would evidently do large, detailed drawings of the area and then go back and cut out sections of the drawing to do the prints from. This resulted in an almost panoramic view of Aizu at different times of the year, when the prints were viewed as a group.