Details

Hide Kawanishi loved his native city of Kobe so much that he dedicated his entire career to producing prints and paintings celebrating this cosmopolitan metropolis. This design depicts the coast of Honshu just west of Kobe, near Mt. Taisen. Oliver Statler in his book, Modern Japanese Prints, recounts how the artist took liberties with the design by placing the lake on the other side of the mountain for the sake of the composition. Given that, this composition is striking and fills the entire oversized sheet with a pleasant calm only the mountains can provide—a respite, just outside Kawanishi’s bustling city of Kobe.

Connoisseur's Note

This is a surprisingly muted pallet for Kawanishi, who is known for his bright and colorful designs, often featuring vivid shades of red, yellow, and purple. The large scale of this print is also surprising, but the composition is bold and self-assured despite the vast majority of Kawanishi’s body of work being diminutive in size. The design was originally commissioned as an advertisement promoting this area for recreation. These advertisements were executed as woodblock prints but were not produced by the artist himself and lack pencil signatures. Posters of this design were also produced and were executed in this exact size but done as mechanical reproductions and not woodblock printed. This rare early work is not part of the edition of woodblock-printed advertisements but is a self-printed impression and bares the artist’s signature in two locations, at the bottom right in the margin and within the design.