Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Saitō Kiyoshi was born in Fukushima Prefecture, but at an early age moved to Hokkaido, the northern most island of the Japanese archipelago and its landscapes are the subject of many of his early prints. Trained as a sign painter he started his own business at the age of twenty, but he dreamed of becoming an oil painter. In 1932 Saitō sold his business and headed for Tokyo. Introduced through a mutual friend, Saitō met Munakata Shikō (1903–1975) and although he was intrigued by woodblock printing Saitō was all too aware of its low status in the Japanese art world. Nevertheless, he experimented with woodblock printing while continuing to study oil painting. A chance meeting with Onchi Kōshirō (1891–1955) in 1946 paved the way for Saitō’s introduction to the rarified circle of print makers that included such luminaries as Hiratsuka Un’ichi (1895–1997). But Saitō’s prominence grew after the war with one successful show after another, his prints purchased by eager Western buyers. In 1948 he held a solo show at the American PX, a year later he won a prize at an exhibition mounted by Americans living in Japan to help artists achieve a larger audience, but Saitō’s big break happened in 1951 when the judges chose his woodblock print Steady Gaze over other Japanese works of painting and sculpture at the Biennial in Saõ Paulo. This not only took the Japanese art market by surprise, but increased Saitō’s stature as an artist and elevated woodblock printing in general. Western collectors tend to think of Saitō’s work as quintessentially Japanese in its stark simplicity, but Saitō’s self-professed models were Munch, Gauguin, and Mondrian.