Tadashi Nakayama

Girl in Sunflower Fields (1972.1.1) 

And 

Girl with Flowers (1972.1.2) 

Both wood block prints 

The two pieces being presented today are both by the same artist from Japan who never went to UWM. But how did they ever get into our collection?

The gallery is committed to purchasing student art for the permanent collection and this practice remains a core part of our mission, but there are some pieces in the collection that pose an ongoing mystery. It seems that at the beginning of the collection’s inception, pieces were donated by professors and founding members of the gallery. Some of that donated art was made by then-current UWM professors but other pieces were likely part of existing collections or bought to jumpstart the collection. Today’s collection highlights fall in the latter category, were bought at the now-closed Roten Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, and were made by Japanese artist Tadashi Nakayama.

Tadashi Nakayama (1927-2014) enjoyed combining traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock techniques with Western aesthetics in his long printmaking career. The beautiful and shimmering effects that can be seen in these two woodblock prints were achieved with great care and precision: his Artnet page says that “his intricate works [were] frequently composed of up to 23 blocks, 48 colors, and 57 stages of printing.”

You can learn more about him at this link: http://www.artnet.com/artists/tadashi-nakayama/

Visual Descriptions:

Woodblock print of a figure (upper torso and head) running through a sunflower field A tall sunflower looms overhead. The colors are predominantly blue and green with iridescent, with oil-slicked patches of background.

Woodblock print of the profile of a figure on the left with red flowers, possibly poppies, sprouting up in front of the figure’s face across the right side of the paper. The figure’s hair falls over their face and casts their eye in shadow. Green and yellow accents on the girl and in the background.