Details

In Cat Making Up, Tomoo Inagaki captures the supple, graceful motion of a single cat caught mid-grooming, its form ingeniously rendered from two overlapping perspectives. The cat’s head, drawn twice within the same figure, conveys both the act of movement and the inner rhythm of feline life. This quasi-cubist vision, with its fractured planes and rhythmic curvature, evokes echoes of Picasso’s explorations of simultaneous viewpoint — yet it remains unmistakably grounded in Inagaki’s own voice.

The composition is a marvel of design: bold black lines carve the figure into distinct zones of ochre, gray, and blue, suggesting both surface and depth. The interplay of angular and curvilinear shapes animates the cat’s posture with a sense of lively dignity. The muted palette further heightens the feeling of intimacy, while the textured treatment of the background adds a subdued, architectural frame to the scene.

Connoisseur's Note

By the mid-1950s, Tomoo Inagaki had reached a confident synthesis of modernist innovation and traditional Japanese sensibility. Cat Making Up reflects this maturity: the bold carving of line and the disciplined structure of form recall the influence of his contemporary, Un’ichi Hiratsuka, whose emphasis on strong, declarative linework left an enduring mark on Inagaki’s aesthetic.

While the visual language here owes something to European Cubism, particularly Picasso’s multi-angled studies, Inagaki’s treatment is softer, more lyrical, infusing the analytic with a quiet emotional grace. Collectors esteem works like Cat Making Up for their ability to transform an everyday moment into a meditation on presence, motion, and the beauty of ordinary life distilled through the clarity of woodblock design.

Among all of Inagaki’s celebrated feline prints, Cat Making Up is widely considered his most successful and most desirable design — a definitive expression of his singular vision and mastery of the medium.

This particular impression is an especially rare trial copy, featuring a variant color scheme distinct from the final edition. Notably, it includes hand-applied coloring in addition to block printing, offering an even more intimate glimpse into the artist’s working process and aesthetic experimentation. It is a print that not only captures a fleeting moment but also the evolution of an idea, frozen in a one-of-a-kind impression.