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Kazuma | Arifuku Hot Spring, Iwami

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織田一磨 Oda Kazuma (1882-1957)

石见有福温泉
Arifuku Hot Spring, Iwami

1925

木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 39cm x 26.6cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tate-e | 39cm x 26.6cm

初版；颜色鲜艳；整体品相良好，仅边缘处有轻微变色和脏痕
Fine impression and color; slight discoloration at the margins, otherwise in excellent condition.

‍Oda Kazuma bridged three worlds – lithographs and both Shin Hanga (new prints) and Sosaku Hanga (creative moment) woodblock prints. Fascinatingly, some attributes of each leaked into the others.

Here we see the tiny hot spring town of Arifuku in Iwami, which still exists today as a consciously retro onsen destination. This is from a set of six prints Kazuma did for the publisher Shozaburo Watenabe, meaning that Kazuma designed the image and, in the classic woodblock print manner, it was carved and printed by others.

‍In Sosaku Hanga, the artist did it all. Since it was a modern movement, it embraced international trends, including a certain amount of abstraction, and we can see some of that here. You’d be hard-pressed to find a move classically Japanese image than the lower half of this print, with its glowing yellow lanterns and little snow-topped houses, but the top half is other-worldly, with fantastically drawn trees and mountains, and great big flakes of snow.

The bitter cold of the mountains and sky contrasts wonderfully with the enveloping warmth suggested by the houses, and the steaming hot-spring baths that await within. The almost black-and-white tonality and the jam-packed activity of the design is reminiscent of Kazuma’s lithographs of Ginza and other locales.

‍This design has a fascinating history. It was, along with all six designs in this series, included in the 1930 show of modern Japanese prints at the Toledo Museum of Art, generally considered the key moment when Shin Hanga burst onto the international scene as an important art form in its own right.

Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.

織田一磨 Oda Kazuma (1882-1957)

石见有福温泉
Arifuku Hot Spring, Iwami

1925

木版画 | 纵绘大大判 | 39cm x 26.6cm
Woodblock-print | Large Oban tate-e | 39cm x 26.6cm

初版；颜色鲜艳；整体品相良好，仅边缘处有轻微变色和脏痕
Fine impression and color; slight discoloration at the margins, otherwise in excellent condition.

‍Oda Kazuma bridged three worlds – lithographs and both Shin Hanga (new prints) and Sosaku Hanga (creative moment) woodblock prints. Fascinatingly, some attributes of each leaked into the others.

Here we see the tiny hot spring town of Arifuku in Iwami, which still exists today as a consciously retro onsen destination. This is from a set of six prints Kazuma did for the publisher Shozaburo Watenabe, meaning that Kazuma designed the image and, in the classic woodblock print manner, it was carved and printed by others.

‍In Sosaku Hanga, the artist did it all. Since it was a modern movement, it embraced international trends, including a certain amount of abstraction, and we can see some of that here. You’d be hard-pressed to find a move classically Japanese image than the lower half of this print, with its glowing yellow lanterns and little snow-topped houses, but the top half is other-worldly, with fantastically drawn trees and mountains, and great big flakes of snow.

The bitter cold of the mountains and sky contrasts wonderfully with the enveloping warmth suggested by the houses, and the steaming hot-spring baths that await within. The almost black-and-white tonality and the jam-packed activity of the design is reminiscent of Kazuma’s lithographs of Ginza and other locales.

‍This design has a fascinating history. It was, along with all six designs in this series, included in the 1930 show of modern Japanese prints at the Toledo Museum of Art, generally considered the key moment when Shin Hanga burst onto the international scene as an important art form in its own right.

Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.

Oda Kazuma (1882-1957)

Oda Kazuma was something of an outlier in the world of Japanese woodblock prints because prints were not his main claim to fame. Indeed, he was one of the premier Japanese lithographers of his day, and his interest in prints came rather late. But even though he produced relatively few designs in that medium, the quality was exceptionally high – and with a modern, slightly surreal style that was truly his own.

Born in Tokyo in 1882, Kazuma moved to Osaka with his family when he was little. He learned lithography from his brother Tou and studied European drawings. Interestingly, his interest in woodblock prints stemmed not from the great Meiji artists, but from Czech artist Emil Orlik.

Eventually, after a stint in Hiroshima, he returned to Tokyo and became a member of the Japan Creative Print Association and, later, the Western-style Print Association. Soon his lithographs of Ginza and other parts of Tokyo captured the charisma and energy of the Taisho and early Showa eras, with lovers in cafes, crowds filling movie theaters, and office buildings rising into the sky where wooden buildings had stood only a few decades previously.

In time he did some woodblock designs for the father of the Shin Hanga (new print) movement, Watanabe Shozaburo. These include the famous “Matsu Ohashi Bridge” from 1924, which shows pedestrians slogging across the snow-covered span, and the extraordinary “Catching Whitebait at Nakaumi”from the same year, which shows a lone fisherman amid a sparkling sky of stars and their watery reflections – an image as magical and otherworldly as any Van Gogh.

Kazuma became a recluse during World War II but later returned to Tokyo and started his own lithographic institute. He died in 1956.