Japanese Woodblock Print, 1997, numbered 3/50

SIZE IN INCHES: 23.25 x 34.25 inches

COMMENTS: Monochrome woodblock print with gold leaf and metallic butterfly looking leaf on paper.

REIKA IWAMAI (1927-2020) was a S?saku-hanga woodblock printmaker who worked primarily with abstract compositions. Iwami was born in Tokyo in 1927 but raised in Kyushu. She later lived in Kanagawa. She studied part time at Bunka Gakuin, and then spent 11 years studying doll-making with Ry?jo Hor before turning her attention to printmaking in 1954. She studied with Koshiro Onchi, a prominent founder of the SOsaku-hanga movement.

n his 1962 book, The Modern Japanese Print - An Appreciation, James A. Michener described his first encounter with Iwami's prints, and mistaking the work for "another of the gifted young men who were knocking for admission to the ateliers of critical review". Michener concluded that "this Iwami, whoever he was, had already reached a point rather more advanced than competing artists who were just then appearing on the scene." Iwami was a prolific printmaker and among the first women printmakers in Japan to achieve recognition at the same level as her male colleagues.

VG with flaws as shown