Still Life with Figs and Other Fruits

Mabuchi Toru was above all a fine technician because of his early and extensive training, first under his father who produced wood engravings and as a teenager at the prestigious Tokyo School of Fine Arts in Ueno.  There he majored in design and enrolled in a class in printmaking by one of the pioneers of the “creative print” movement, Hirasuka Un’ichi (1895–1997).  Mabuchi delighted in creating unusual effects, the most notable being the mosaic-like quality of his prints, such as the example exhibited here, which is achieved by pasting small square and triangular pieces of wood to the surface of the flat wooden block.  Sometimes a single woodblock print involved up to thirty or forty printing stages.

Mabuchi’s prints frequently have as their subject quiet, simple still-lives, done in deep, rich tones and softened with a velvety texture.  The still-life is not a common subject in traditional Japanese printmaking, and Mabuchi’s devotion to it was likely inspired by western printmaking, particularly Dutch 17th-century engravings and etchings.  But Mabuchi’s application of individual cubes of printed color bring to mind other European traditions—French Post-Impressionist squared strokes of pigment and Cubist geometrics in the years 1890 to 1915.