Munenori Makino - Returning Road - Kaeri Michi

Munenori Makino (b. 1940)

Condition: Excellent condition.
Edition: 92/100
Date: 1969
Size: 12 x 16 inches

帰り道（小） — Kaeri Michi (Small) / “The Way Home”. The railway subject is particularly appealing. An early work, Makino has turned the steel bridge, electrical gantries, signal and curving tracks into a very strong geometric composition. The tiny silhouetted figure crossing the bridge is a wonderful counterpoint to all that industrial structure.

About Munenori Makino
Makino was born in Shizuoka City in 1940. As a young artist he became deeply interested in traditional ukiyo-e woodblock techniques and learned from professional printers including Fumihiko Ogawa, Setsutarō Matsumoto and Shigeru Sasaki. Importantly, Makino eventually performed the traditional three stages—designing, carving and printing—himself, rather than relying on the traditional division of labor between artist, carver and printer.

His early works, including Kaeri Michi, are stylistically quite different from the brilliantly colored nature prints for which he later became known.

His career subsequently became quite substantial. He exhibited at the Joslyn Art Museum in the United States in 1986; received the first Kawamura Prize in 1989; and had major exhibitions at the Ōta Memorial Museum of Art in 1992, 1999 and 2009. He received the Shizuoka Prefecture Cultural Encouragement Award in 1994, was named a Shizuoka City educational/cultural contributor in 2001, and received a Commissioner for Cultural Affairs commendation in 2003. GNP

His work is also represented in Japanese public collections. Art Platform Japan, for example, documents Makino woodcuts in the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art collection.