<b>POTARA MAUSOLEUM AT SHOTOKU</b> / Unichi Hiratsuka1948<b>SOLD</b></em>

Details

Hiratsuka credits Kunzo Minami as his main influence for the palette he chose to explore throughout his long and prolific career. Though Hiratsuka is most known for his outstanding black and white designs, he was captivated early on by Minami’s sense of color. One can directly see this influence within Hiratsuka’s work if we consider this striking design of a Tibetan-style Buddhist mausoleum. The composition is structured and rigid, echoing the formality of the building, but Hiratsuka animates the composition with a lively color choice aesthetically well-suited for a Tibetan structure. Yellow, pink, teal, violet, and green dominate the composition and recall traditional, brightly colored Tibetan Tankas. The colors used in this composition compare quite well to Minami’s woodblock prints, particularly his Seto Island Sea design from 1911, available here. Though Hiratsuka’s design is much more formal and imposing than Minami’s landscape, the similar color choices and the lively spirit they invoke strongly suggest a link between the two compositions.

Connoisseur's Note

Hiratsuka’s most commercial work was primarily focused on black and white imagery. His early colored prints were typically produced before the mid-1950s and executed in smaller print runs. As such, this particular impression is an exceptionally rare example of his multicolored designs in pristine condition.