Kiyoshi (1897 - 1948 )
A student of the bijin-ga painter Kiyokata Kaburagi, Kiyoshi Kobayakawa concentrated on delicate depictions of beautiful women across painting and print. At times, he broke from bijin-ga convention and portrayed his subjects in the styles of the early 20th century, such as dressed western clothes or smoking cigarettes. As a painter, he regularly participated in Teitan exhibitions from 1924 forward. He began to design woodblock prints around 1927. As collector and admirer of ukiyo-e, he drew inspiration from the color and compositions of 17th-19th century printmakers. Between 1930 and 1931, Kiyoshi self-published the six-print series Styles of Contemporary Makeup (kindai jisesho). Half of the women pictured exude the particular femininity of the moga (modern girl), while the remaining three designs echo Kiyoshi’s contemporaries, featuring women in private moments in front of their toilette.
*There is some disagreement about his birth year.
Shin Hanga | Pre-WWII Japanese Prints
By the beginning of the 20th century the social fabric of Japan was radically altered and ukiyo-e was falling fast into oblivion. Surprisingly, it was under the stimulus of the Western art world that the spirit of ukiyo-e was reborn through the Shin Hanga or “new print” movement. The discovery of the powerful impact of ukiyo-e print masters on the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists inspired a new generation of Japanese print artists who revived distinctly Japanese subject matter through modern eyes. International excitement for ukiyo-e paved the way for these artists to create woodblock prints with the same dignity, perfection and genius as the masters of the Edo period. As artists such as Goyo, Kotondo and Shinsui revived bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women) and Hasui and Yoshida reinterpreted the landscape of Japan, Shin Hanga reasserted the principal genres of ukiyo-e with a renewed vigor. Browse our collection of Shin Hanga and other pre-war Japanese artworks today.
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