Details
The image
Shapes that look carved rather than drawn: a face or a form built from overlapping blocks of colour, the edges rough where the block was cut, the surface uneven. The composition is dense at the centre and the paper shows through in patches.
Where it comes from
Onchi Kōshirō was one of the founders of the sōsaku-hanga movement, which argued that a print should be the artist’s own work from drawing to cutting to printing rather than a collaboration between specialists. The result was a looser, more personal image: visible knife marks, colour laid unevenly, forms abstracted until they read as feeling rather than as description. Onchi worked in Tokyo through the first half of the twentieth century and is credited with bringing the movement its first wide audience.
On the wall
It suits a study, a hallway or a living room with plain walls, where a textured image gives a wall weight without detail. Because the surface is uneven and the colour muted, it needs light falling across it. In a group it should be the piece that introduces texture.
In company
For a wall that will carry more than one, the Japanese collection supplies the rest.Avoid very smooth, glossy neighbours, the roughness is the subject and needs contrast and the muted colour works best where daylight reaches the wall during the afternoon.
