Azechi Umetaro: Bird on a Cherry Branch Woodblock

Azechi Umetaro: Bird on a Cherry Branch Woodblock

Japanese Woodblock Print, 1980s, with the artist's seal in the block. Sealed on the verso by the publisher Chikuhodo

SIZE : 11.5 cm x 13 cm

SIZE : 23 cm x 22 cm with frame

AZECHI UMETARO (1902-1999) was born to an impoverished farming family in Ehime prefecture on remote Shikoku Island on December 28, 1902. To make ends meet, Azechi's father carved masks for village festivals and Azechi would later comment that he inherited his father's craftsmanship. At the age of 16, unwilling to take up farming and with his father's approval, he decided to try his luck in Tokyo.  Stopping in Osaka to see his older brother, his ill-defined plans to move to Tokyo were derailed by his brother's insistence that he first earn some money. Serving for eighteen months as a cabin boy on a freighter, he would not see Tokyo until the age of eighteen.

Arriving in Tokyo, Azechi held various jobs, including delivering newspapers. It was his newspaper route that brought him in contact with an art student who he saw painting one morning, and Oliver Statler reported that "it struck Azechi that here was a fascinating occupation. He fell in love, not with art, but with the idea of being an artist." He proceeded to enroll in an art correspondence course and thought of attending a private art school, but lack of funds and a call for induction in the army stopped his art education.  Returning to Shikoku for induction, he was rejected by the army for being too short. He returned to Tokyo in 1923 in time to experience the horrific 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake which forced him to return home again. Back home he tried farming, hated it, and misrepresenting himself as an experienced oil painter, was hired as a poster painter for a movie theater. In 1925, after two years in Shikoku and even more determined to become an artist, he returned to Tokyo where he was hired, through a friend, in a government printing plant.