Winter in Aizu (D)

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 was the fifth in the series, cut originally in 1938. A bundled single figure approaches a small temple in the snowy landscape. This impression was printed before 1950 and the sheet of paper has a watermark that reads "Kiyoshi Saito" in the lower right corner. There are two blocks, a dark gray and a black. The white is created by the color of the paper.

Part of the provenance includes an old label on the verso that reads: "M.M. Shinno & Associates / 1852 Micheltorena St. / Los Angeles, Calif. 90026".

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 when the prints were viewed as a group.