Torii Moto (at the Shrine gate) — Masao Ido, 1986 - Japanese woodblock print

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Torii Moto (at the Shrine gate) — Masao Ido, 1986

A Sun-Dappled Approach to a Kyoto Shrine, Rendered in the Sōsaku-Hanga Tradition

Description

This finely detailed woodblock print by celebrated Kyoto artist Masao Ido (b. 1945) captures a hushed moment along the stone approach to a Shinto shrine, where a vivid vermillion torii gate frames a weathered thatched roofline beyond. Ido’s signature technique — a speckled, almost granular application of pigment — gives every surface a tactile, sun-warmed texture: the moss-dark pines, the raked gravel path, the stacked fieldstone wall, and the gate’s lacquered red beams all seem to hold the particular light of a quiet Kyoto afternoon. A stone lantern and a hanging red lantern add small, glowing accents of color against the composition’s earthy palette of ochre, charcoal, and forest green.

Titled “鳥居本” (Toriimoto) in pencil by the artist, this work is signed and numbered 181/200 from the edition, and bears Ido’s carved red seal in the lower right corner. The print remains in its original Japanese gallery frame, a simple dark wood molding with a generous cream mat that lets the composition breathe.

The Artist: Masao Ido

Born in 1945 in Manchuria and raised from childhood in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, Masao Ido relocated to Kyoto in 1959, where he apprenticed under textile-dyeing master Mitsuo Yoshida before studying under Nitten council member Shigechika Ōtsubo. He became one of the most recognized names of the modern Kyoto print scene, celebrated for his ability to translate the city’s temples, shrines, and back streets into bold, semi-abstract compositions built from flat planes of textured color. His work has been acquired by the collections of Kyoto Prefecture and City, Iwate Prefecture, Morioka City, the city of Salerno in Italy, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and MoMA in New York, and he has exhibited widely across Japan’s major galleries and department stores since the early 1980s.

About Japanese Woodblock Printing

Traditional Japanese woodblock printing (mokuhanga) is a labor-intensive process in which each color in a composition requires its own hand-carved cherrywood block, printed in careful registration onto handmade washi paper using water-based pigments and a hand-held baren rather than a mechanical press. Ido belongs to the postwar sōsaku-hanga (“creative print”) lineage, in which the artist typically designs, carves, and prints the work personally — a departure from the older ukiyo-e system that divided labor between designer, carver, and printer. The result is a print with unusually rich surface texture and painterly depth, qualities clearly visible in the speckled, almost stone-like color fields of this work.

Dimensions

• Sheet: H 21 cm × W 44 cm (H 8¼ in × W 17⅜ in)
• Frame: H 37 cm × W 61.5 cm × D 3 cm (H 14⅝ in × W 24¼ in × D 1⅛ in)

Condition

Signed, titled, and numbered 181/200 in pencil by the artist; carved artist’s seal lower right. Presented in the original Japanese frame.