About This Print

"Hara has been working with the theme of 'strokes' since the 1970s. The strokes are paths of light, each one a range of intensities captured by Hara's magnificent technique of colour gradation."¹  His prints, exhibiting "flat coolness and perfect evenness"² at first appear to be silkscreens, but they are achieved through lithography "often involving many different printings"³ using the artist's "special technique with a method of applying the ink with huge rollers to give his work an element of unbelievable smoothness, lushness, and control."⁴

I was immediately drawn to Hara's work when it first came to my attention in 2007, seeing its indebtedness to traditional Japanese calligraphy in its movement while substituting a rainbow of saturated colors for the traditional black sumi ink. I find Hara's work cerebral, alternately calming and exciting, and continually interesting. 

For this 1981 print, Hara offers us the ultimate in cool, with shades of blues and greys evoking the isolation one can feel in winter - perhaps 81-21 is the artist's ideograph for "solitude."


¹ Contemporary Japanese Prints: The Urban Bonsai, Jackie Menzies, Art Gallery of New South Wales1992, p. 29
² Ibid.
³ Contemporary Japanese Prints: Symbols of a Society in Transition, Lawrence Smith, Harper & Row Publishers, 1985, p. 28.
⁴ Collecting Modern Japanese Prints, Then and Now, Mary and Norman Tolman, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1994, p. 126.

Print Details

IHL Catalog	#166
Title	Strokes 81-21
Artist	Hara Takeshi (b. 1942)
Signature	Takeshi Hara
Seal
Publication Date	1981
Edition	32 of 60
Publisher	self-published
Printer	self-printed
Impression	excellent
Colors	excellent
Condition	excellent
Genre	contemporary lithograph
Miscellaneous	Arches 88 paper
Format
H x W Paper	26 3/4 x 22 1/4 in. (67.9 x 56.5 cm)
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