Kaoru Kawano (1916-1965) Japanese, Woodblock Print. Shows two black and white kittens snuggling together for comfort, one asleep, one awake. Artist's red stamp bottom right. Gallery label and artist's biography attached to back. 

Overall Size: 20 1/2 X 16 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 15 X 10 1/2 in. 

#4925 . 

Kaoru Kawano was born in the village of Otaru in the prefecture of Hokkaido, Japan in 1916, and became interested in art at an early age. He studied at Kawabata Art School in 1934, first focusing on oil painting but eventually turning to woodblock printmaking. He is known for his contributions to the sosaku hanga movement, a modernist approach to the technique that emphasized the artist’s individual creativity. Because his earlier works showed such great promise, they were displayed at the Nihon Hanga Kyokai Exhibition (Japan Print Society) in 1944. His pieces were characterized by the use of bold, bright colors and simple, stylized forms. He often depicted traditional Japanese subjects, such as geisha, kabuki actors, and landscapes, but gave them a modern twist, integrating European Expressionist influences that made his prints have a distinctive, graphic quality that sets them apart from the more detailed and intricate prints of earlier periods, and even many of his early contemporaries. In 1944 he joined the army, and wound up as a prisoner of war in Siberia. The experience was traumatizing and led to health issues from which he never fully recovered, and influenced his art once he was able to return to Japan. He resumed exhibiting with Nihon Hanga Kyokai in 1949, followed by Kokugakai in 1952. He was awarded the Kokuga Prize in 1954, and exhibited for the first time outside the country in Yugoslavia. He moved to Tokyo in 1958 and participated in international competitions and solo exhibitions in New York, Seattle, Chicago, and other parts of the United States, gaining immense success throughout the country, especially with his highly textured abstract representations of children. Despite his rapid ascent Kawano remained modest and lived a simple life, plagued by the health issues from his imprisonment. They contributed to his tragic early death at the age of 49 in 1965, but his legacy and influence on modern Japanese woodblock work is still felt today.