TAB Event - From Permanent Collection, Kazuma Oda "Tokyo Scenery"

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At Yokosuka Museum of Art
Media: Prints

print

For this season, a complete series of 20 lithographs entitled "Tokyo Scenery" by Kazuma Oda (1882-1956) is on display from the museum's permanent collection. Oda grew up in Tokyo and moved to Osaka with his family when he was 16, where he started studying painting and lithography. In 1909, he joined a literary group started by the magazine "Housun," and participated in their creative printmaking movement which valued the entire process of printmaking: drawing, engraving, and printing.

"Tokyo Scenery" is Oda's first attempt to engage in the process of lithography. Applying a wide range of techniques that he acquired over time, he proved that lithography, once considered a quick medium, could be serious art. In this series he devoted himself to simply depicting the landscapes of Tokyo, while other artists were exploring sensational self-expressions in the modernist movement. It was as if Oda was insisting that printmaking was a medium which could be appreciated by larger audiences, just like Ukiyo-e was in the Edo period.

The scenery Oda depicted clearly showed the underlying Edo culture within the modernized urban city. The prints purely speak of the old days, which were eventually lost in the earthquake and the war.

[Image: "Surugadai" from "Tokyo Scenery" series (1916)]

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