Artist: Bakufu Ohno
Title: Bamboo
Date: 1949
Details: More information...
Source:
Japanese Art Open Database
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Description:
Monday, 9 May 2005 Bamboo by Ohno Bakufu. Ohno combines his talent for plant depiction with an abstraction of line to give us this remarkable woodblock. He removes four mature and three young bamboo plants from the confusion of the forest habitant and places them in an indefinite space. His severely limited pallette, curvilinear columns, and absence of a horizon line take a common place landscape and move it into the extraordinary. The dark green of the mature plants is unbroken by black keyblock lines. Because of this, the leaves and thin branches have a watercolor look. The brown splashes of ground cover definitely look like watercolor strokes. Ohno does the young bamboo in a very different way. He uses thin, scratchy, brown lines, which suggest ink drawing, to define the curving, triangular shapes. Yellow leaf tips, lined with green, flick out from the top and outer husk. The whole effect is geometrical and artificial. This is a most unusual print from a master of Shin Hanga and kacho-e.
