Background
Sekino Jun'ichirô ( 1914–1988) was the leading Japanese figurative printmaker to emerge from the circle of Onchi Kôshirô (1891–1955). Highly skilled in drawing and composition, Sekino assimilated traditional and modern art from Japan, Europe, and the United States in his portraiture, still life, and landscapes. A prolific artist, he worked for nearly six decades, producing well over a thousand prints, drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings. Sekino's best works, especially those around the mid-twentieth century, stand out as notable achievements in modern Japanese printmaking.1
Sekino was also a prolific book illustrator and designer, following a model established by his mentor Onchi who designed 1,000 to 2,000 books and book covers, magazine, and sheet-music designs. We don't, at the moment, have a reliable count for all of Sekino's book projects, but he must have had a hand in many hundreds, and possibly more than 1,000 books, ranging from providing a single illustration for a volume of poetry to creating many images and texts for his own books, for which he designed all the contents from cover to cover. These works were often inventive in style and represent a substantial commitment to the art of the Japanese book in the twentieth century.
For more about this artist, see Sekino Jun'ichirô Biography.
Design
Keishû futsukuni-dera (Seokguram Grotto and Bulguksa Temple) was established in the 8th century on the slopes of Mount Toham. The Seokguram Grotto contains a monumental statue of the Buddha looking at the sea in the bhumisparsha mudra position. With the surrounding portrayals of gods, Bodhisattvas and disciples, all realistically and delicately sculpted in high and low relief, it is considered a masterpiece of Buddhist art in the Far East. The Temple of Bulguksa (built in 774) and the Seokguram Grotto form a religious architectural complex of exceptional significance.
Rooftops were a favorite theme of the artist. He was fascinated by the geometry and depth of space perceived through unusual aerial viewpoints, which can be seen in the print we are offering here. The repeated patterns of roof tiles were also intriguing aspects of design. In foreign lands, Sekino produced prints of roofs in Florence, Korea, Lima (Peru), Moscow, Paris, and Toledo (Spain), to name just a few. In Japan, there are rooftop views from Hokkaido, Karadera, Miyajima-chô, Nagasaki, Okinawa, and Ryûkyû, among others.
Art works by Sekino can be found in numerous public collections, such as the Art Institute Chicago; British Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Portland Art Museum; and University of Oregon.
The colors in this impression are excellent — a welcome change from the usual impressions damaged by poor framing practices and excessive light exposure.
References:
- Aomori Museum of Art (Aomori Kenritsu Bijutsukan: 青森県立美術館), ed. Akira Kanno (担当菅野晶): Sekino Jun'ichirô ten: Seitan hyakkunen (Exhibition of Sekino Jun'ichirô: 100th Anniversary of His Birth": 関野準一郎展 ・ 生誕百年), Oct. 4 to Nov. 24, 2014 (exhibition catalog).
- Fiorillo, John, "The art of Sekino Jun'ichirô: Expressive realism and geometric formalism," in: Andon, 2017, no. 104.
- Kuwabara, Sumio (ed.), Jun'ichirô Sekino, the Prints (関野準一郎版画作品集 Sekino Jun'ichirô hanga saku shina-shû "Collected prints of Sekino Jun'ichirô," 1994; ed. ©1997 Katsuko Sekino, no. 883, p. 700.
- Smith, Lawrence. Japanese Prints during the Allied Occupation 1945-1952 — Onchi Kôshirô, Ernst Hacker and the First Thursday Society (London: British Museum, 2002), pp. 62 and 89, no. 48.
- Amanda Zehnder: Modern Japanese Prints — The Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 2009), p. 161.
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