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'Nude' by S. Munakata
'Pagoda'
by Tobei Kamei
I
am pleased to present an extraordinary collection of prints gathered by
Patricia C. Brandes while living in post-World War II Japan, as well as
prints from her career of innovative printmaking spanning more than 4
decades. The following article on the Sosaku Hanga movement and Particia
Brandes is by Art Hazelwood.
(Click here for pricelist)
(Click
here for more images)
(Click here for
prints by Pat Brandes)
In the 1950s Japan was rebuilding from the destruction of World War II, and a strong US military presence gave ample opportunity for Americans to see the country. But in an unusual twist one woman’s reason for joining the military was artistic. After seeing Japanese woodblock prints in her college town of Ellensburg, Washington, Patricia Cosper, (now Patricia C. Brandes) landed a job with the military teaching crafts at Camp Whittington, a US Army base in Japan.
Brandes spent five years in the 1950s living, studying and showing in Japan. Her private collection represents more than forty artists associated with the Sosaku Hanga movement and is unique in having been assembled for personal use by an American artist deeply involved in the techniques and aesthetics of the movement.
Sosaku Hanga was a modernist print movement, which began in the early 20th century and reached international recognition in the 1950s. At that time most of the extremely long-lived Sosaku Hanga artists had reached their full development.
The
movement was an expression of Japanese artistic feeling as it began looking
to Western influences. Although there were also stylistic borrowings from
the West, a crucially important influence was the example of European
artists who created and printed their own prints. In the earlier Ukiyoe
tradition the printer was only a craftsman, carving and printing the designs
of the artist, which meant that the printmaker was never the creator of
his own imagery. The freedom to create and print ones own work was a liberating
and powerful impulse for an artistic culture so involved in printmaking.
Un’ichi Hiratsuka, 1895 - 1997, was a central figure of the Sosaku
Hanga movement. Hiratsuka was a dedicated teacher, working at the Tokyo
Academy of Fine Arts before the war and teaching privately after that.
He pushed for the teaching of woodcut printing as a discipline in the
Academy for many years.
'Stone Lantern' by Hiratsuka
'Uma' by Kazumi Amano
The most well known of the artists associated with this movement are Shiko Munakata 1903 - 1975, Kiyoshi Saito 1907- 1997, and Sadao Watanabe 1913 - 1996. Munakata, who won the Venice Biennale and the Sao Paolo Bienal in 1956, was reaching new heights of fame when Brandes met him.
Haley's Comet
by
Patricia C. Brandes
Other artists associated with the Sosaku Hanga represented in the collection of Patricia C. Brandes are Umetaro Azechi 1902 - 1999, Tomoo Inagaki 1902 - 1980, Hashimoto Oki-ie 1899 - 1993, Kihei Sasajima 1906 - 1993, and Junichiro Sekino 1914 - 1988.
A review that show was written by the esteemed historian of Japanese prints, Oliver Statler, in the Asahi Evening News. Brandes is praised for her enthusiasm and her technical experiments. Statler describes one of her methods in which a wax resist is applied to blocks so that the color printing (using water based inks) forms an uneven and interesting texture.
After three years teaching on the army base and two more years living on her own in Japan, Brandes returned to the US to further her studies. Soon she was in France studying with
Stone Mountain
by Patricia C. Brandes
Information in this article was gathered from contemporary news clipping in the collection of
Patricia C. Brandes.
The following price list will be updated periodically as prints are added or sold.
Please email to confirm if a particular print is still available.
Click Here to view images of prints.
Click Here to view Japanese scrolls from the Sosaku Hanga which are also available.
