Owl

In 1928, Shikō Munakata learned how to carve wood and began an exuberant, prodigious career as a woodblock printmaker. His dynamic, bold, and roughly-hewn black-and-white compositions emerge out of a spontaneous process in which Munakata carved the block in a single sitting, almost "drawing" the wood with his gouges rather than carving it.

Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961)—founder of the Japanese Folk Art Movement (in Japanese, mingei)—was struck by Munakata’s simple, direct approach to the woodcut medium and his avoidance of complicated pictorial effects, aspects of his work that Yanagi associated with the Japanese folk art tradition. His praise for Munakata’s prints was in keeping with the mingei philosophy of "handcrafted art of ordinary people."

In this print featuring an owl perched on a branch—one or more bird similarly posed was a favorite subject for the artist— Munakata demonstrates his mastery of different woodcut techniques in his use of positive and negative elements in the carving of the block from which the work is printed. Raised cut lines print black in the final image to establish contours and outlined forms. Incisions made with the gouge into the flat face of the block are not inked and retain the color of the paper when printed to define interior details.