Red Gate in snow 1935 Shiro Kasamatsu (met dank aan artelino)
Shiro Kasamatsu was 13 years old when he started his art education. He studied traditional Japanese painting (Nihonga) and was a successful landscape painter. When he was 21 he started making woodblockprints in the new Shin Hanga style. The Shin Hanga style continued the traditional print making process and subjects of the ukiyo-e style but was new in its designs which were more oriented on Western art. Before World War II Shin Hanga woodblockprints were very popular in the West (predominantlyin the USA) but not in modernising Japan itself.The prints confirmed the romantic and exotic picture of Japan foreigners liked tot see. ( see above). After the war Kasamatsu changed his style and workprocess. He left his publisher Watanabe, did the cutting and printing by himself and became his own publisher. His designs became more personal, sober and abstract. If you compare the print of the Red gate 1935 (a classical Shin Hanga print) and the print of the Red Gate 1967 you clearly see the difference in style. The 1967 print is an example of the more "artistic" Sosaku Hanga" movement.