Background
Miyashita Tokio 宮下登喜雄 (1930–2011) is best known for his intensely colored prints created from a combination of woodblock and metal plate processes. He was born in 1930 in Tokyo. He was the son of a metals dealer, giving him access to many of the tools and materials required to work on metal plates, one of several media he employed in print making. Miyashita must have shown an early affinity for woodblock prints, as a middle school teacher enabled him, while still in high school, to study woodblock print making with Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895–1997), one of the founders of the sosaku hanga movement, from 1946 to 1948. In 1950, while attending Meiji University, he studied metal plate print making with Komai Tetsurô (1920-76) and Sekin" Jun’ichirô (1914–88). He went on to graduate from Meiji University's department of literature in 1951. He was active, starting in 1955 and throughout his career, with Nihon Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Print Association) and was also a member of the Japan Copper-Plate Artist Association. In 1979, Miyashita traveled to Europe and America for the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in preparation for its future exhibition of international artists' works. Writing in 1980, in Japanese Prints Today: Tradition With Innovation, Hilton and Johnson provide this glimpse of the artist's life: Miyashita lives with his wife and children in a pleasant home at the end of a long lane lined with trees, away from the center of Tokyo. His second floor studio is airy, colorful, and efficient; it reminds us of his prints. Red and blue chairs, a large table, an etching press, and racks with hanging tools dominate one side of the room. Across the room on the floor facing a window-wall is the woodblock-printing center: a zabuton (cushion) to sit on, and a low table to print on. Within reach are barens, brushes and many bowls and jars of bright-colored inks.… Miyashita’s workspaces reflect dramatically the contrasting methods he uses to create his prints; the simple baren and the massive etching press are symbolic, each one a pressure tool to get ink onto a print. In the 1990s Miyashita taught at the Tokyo University of Art and Education. In Collecting Modern Japanese Prints, Tolman praised Miyashita as "a serious and dedicated artist... [who] as a friend is a most relaxed and helpful person, who is always the first to lend a helping hand." Miyashita died on January 6, 2011
The text above was taken from Irwin Lavenberg, https://pages.uoregon.edu/jsmacollections/home/artists/miyashita-tokio-1930-2011.html.
Merritt and Yamada noted that, "Early prints, before 1962, depicted the waterfront region of Tokyo where Miyashita was born.... but later prints are characterized by rugged lines made by soldering wires onto a zinc plate and printing, sometimes in combination with photoengraving, against brilliantly colored backgrounds printed by woodblock. Miyashita once said, "I use bright colors to show the bright side of life."
Design
The print by Miyashita offered here is done in style quite different from his better known later works, which include strongly colored images printed from woodblock along with metal plates and the soldered pieces of metal mentioned above. It remains unclear just what Miyashita's influences were for the present work, but surely some of the abstract paintings and prints produced in the West in the Twentieth Century played a role.
References:
- Johnson, Margeret and Dale Hilton, Japanese Prints Today: Tradition with Innovation, , Shufunotomo Co., 1980.
- Merritt, Helen and Yamada, Nanako: Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints 1900-1975. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1992.
- Gaston Petit, 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1973.
- Smith, Lawrence: The Japanese Print Since 1900: Old Dreams and New Visions. London, British Museum Press, 1983.
- Mary and Norman Tolman, Collecting Modern Japanese Prints, Then and Now. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1994.
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