Akira Kurosaki - 禁じられた恋人たち13 (Forbidden Lovers 13)

Modern | Sōsaku Hanga Woodblock Print

A fabulous print by Akira Kurosaki: 禁じられた恋人たち13 (Forbidden Lovers 13). Across a broad turquoise-green field, fragmented outlines of interlocking bodies, fingers and hands dissolve into one another, shifting between recognisable anatomy and abstraction. At the centre, a framed photographic-relief image introduces more overtly sexualised imagery, partly obscured beneath layers of black, grey and yellow-green. Four red-to-black blocks punctuate the surrounding space, while the combination of drawn bodies, photographic imagery and abstract colour gives the work an uneasy, deliberately fragmented quality. A strong example from Kurosaki’s 1976 Forbidden Lovers series, where woodblock and photographic relief are brought together around the human body, intimacy and concealment. 🟩🟥

• Year & Edition: 1976 · Ed. of 90 (24/90) (signed & titled in pencil to plate).
• Medium: Woodblock & Photographic relief. 6 blocks, 8 colours (1/1 photo). Printed on Echizen Torinoko paper*.
• Dimensions: Sheet approx H: 49.00 cm × W: 67.00 cm (Image H: 39.00 cm × W: 55.00 cm).
• Condition: Lovely, no marks or blemishes. Paper clean & crisp. 
• Notes: Forbidden Lovers 13 belongs to Kurosaki’s substantial Forbidden Lovers series of 1976, in which he repeatedly combined woodblock with photographic relief and fragmented imagery of the human body. Works from the series are held in major Japanese and international collections, including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Fukuoka Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, Gunma; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; and Portland Art Museum. *Artist watermark to margins. Raisonné No. 231, (W216). 黒崎彰の全仕事 (The Complete Works of Akira Kurosaki: Catalogue Raisonné 1965-2006).

About the Artist

Akira Kurosaki (1937-2019) was a pioneering mokuhanga artist who fused traditional Japanese woodblock techniques with bold abstraction and surreal landscapes, rendered in his signature deep reds, purples and blacks. A graduate of the Kyoto Institute of Technology and devoted to the sōsaku hanga ethos - overseeing every stage of production himself - he earned the Florence Biennale Gold Prize and Japan’s Order of the Sacred Treasure. From 1987 he taught and led the Printmaking Department at Kyoto Seika University, mentoring a generation of printmakers; his work is held by the British Museum, MoMA and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. [ ← View All Works by Akira Kurosaki]