Details

In Quiet Night, Hideo Hagiwara draws us into a meditative cosmos where abstract forms drift through a field of rich, velvety blue. At once cosmic and microscopic, the composition balances an earthy gravitas with a playful sense of mystery. A large, dark central form floats like a planet or seed, orbited by vivid accents—a radiant red, a glowing orange, a cluster of turquoise rings—each suspended in a space that feels both infinite and intimate.

Hagiwara’s mastery of surface texture is on full display here. The background, layered with variegated inking, feels softly burnished, like worn velvet under moonlight. The subtle tonal shifts and gradations suggest quiet movement—a celestial drift through silence. While not overtly figurative, the work evokes the sensation of looking upward on a cold night, when the stars hang low and the hush of darkness envelopes all.

Connoisseur's Note

By the late 1970s, Hagiwara had achieved a singular synthesis of the Sōsaku Hanga spirit—where artist, carver, and printer are unified—with a deeply personal abstraction. In Quiet Night, he channels his decades of technical refinement into an image that is both distilled and expansive. Here, we see echoes of post-war Japanese abstraction, filtered through Hagiwara’s singular lyricism.

This impression, numbered 13 of only 20, is a rare example of his small-edition, hand-pulled prints. The richness of the blue ground, along with the precision of registration and color balance, marks this as an especially strong printing. As with much of Hagiwara’s work, the seemingly simple arrangement belies an intricate choreography of ink and paper—each layer imbued with atmosphere, each mark a meditation.