Japanese Prints - Ansei Uchima
Home | Japanese
Print Gallery
Click on image below for larger photos
Like other artists in the sosaku-hanga school, Uchima carved, inked, and printed his own wood blocks, enjoying the accidents and unexpected opportunities that arose spontaneously from interaction with the wood block. His first prints, beginning in 1957, drew from nature and the world around him. After he returned to the United States in 1959, his floating, calligraphic compositions, characteristic of sosaku-hanga, suggested the growing influence of Abstract Expressionism. Uchima used Japanese paper made especially for him by a Japanese master papermaker and National Treasure, Ichibei Iwano. Uchima was an esteemed woodblock print artist, painter, and fine arts professor, as well as Emeritus faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College, where he taught from 1962 to 1982. Uchima also taught at Columbia University to 1982. He received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1962 and 1970, and his work is included in permanent collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, National Gallery of Art, among many others. (Source: New York Public Library Prints) |