Sosaku Hanga by Sadao Watanabe

Second Floor

About the Artist

Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996) was born in Tokyo, Japan, and baptized a Christian in 1930. He combined a dedication to his new faith with an interest in preserving the traditional folk art of Okinawan stencil dying, or katzome. After years as an apprentice learning techniques for dying kimono fabric, he studied under the stencil artist Serizawa Keisuke (1895-1984) and then under Yanagi Soetsu (1891-1961), the founder of the Japanese Folk Art Movement.

Watanabe was one of the best-known sosaku hanga artists to use the medium called kapazuri (stencil painting), a technique related to katazome (stencil dyeing). Katazome is said to have originated in Okinawa where Watanabe's teacher, Serizawa Keisuke (1895-1894), learned the process in the early 1930s. Although Watanabe based his designs exclusively on biblical subjects, his Christian stories and figures were interpreted through a filter of traditional Japanese techniques and show the influence of old Buddhist figures prints.

Watanabe's Biblical prints have been popular throughout the world and hang in the White House, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Tokyo's Folk craft Museum and National Museum of Modern Art, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, London's British Museum, Sydney's Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art.