is the artistic name of Maejima Tadaaki, who was born in

Ibaraki Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Ibaraki Prefecture has a population of 2,871,199 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Ibaraki Prefecture borders Fukushima Prefecture to the north, ...

. He was a ''

sōsaku-hanga was an art movement of woodblock printing which was conceived in early 20th-century Japan. It stressed the artist as the sole creator motivated by a desire for self-expression, and advocated principles of art that is "self-drawn" (自画 ''jiga' ...

'' artist in 20th Century

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Maejima Tadaaki was trained as a

kamikaze , officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...

pilot in the Japanese air force, but the war ended before he was assigned a mission. Haku had no formal art training, but studied for two years with the ''

'' artist

Onchi Kōshirō Onchi (written: 恩地) is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: *, Japanese film and television director *, Japanese print-maker {{Surname Japanese-language surnames ...

(1891–1955). Two unique qualities of Maki Haku prints are the textures achieved by working the designs in wet cement and the use of

Kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

(Chinese characters) as design motifs. In 1962, he started adding texture to his prints. At first, he added texture to the entire sheet after it was printed. In 1965, he began embossing designs into unprinted paper by using a press to transfer a design created in cement on a carved plywood board, and then adding color with stencils. He distorted and rearranged the strokes of Chinese characters to produce striking and serene images. For example, ''Poem 71-91'' is a highly stylized representation of the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

無, which is pronounced mu and means nothingness, an important concept in some forms of Buddhism. Haku participated in the Tokyo International Print Biennale in 1957 and 1960. The book ''Festive Wine: Ancient Japanese Poems from the Kinkafu'' is a translation of 21 ancient poems called Kinkafu or ''Music for Wagon Songs''. The translation is accompanied by Maki Haku's prints that were made in 1968–69. The

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

, the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(New York), the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

are among the public collections holding prints by Maki Haku.

External links

Haku-maki.com

Maki Haku's works at Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maki, Haku Japanese printmakers 1924 births 2000 deaths Artists from Ibaraki Prefecture Sosaku hanga artists 20th-century Japanese artists

Further reading

External links

Footnotes