Saitō Kiyoshi

BIOGRAPHY

Early Childhood

Born in the small village of Aizubange, Kawanuma in Fukushima prefecture on April 27, 1907, Saitō knew poverty as a child. He was four or five when his father lost his business and moved the family to Yubari, Hokkaido where he found work in the Otaru coal mines. His mother died when he was thirteen and he was sent off to be the ward of a Buddhist temple twelve hundred miles from home. Unhappy at the temple he tried to buy a railway ticket home.  A sympathetic priest interceded and sent him back to Yubari. 

Moving to Tokyo

Displaying an aptitude for drawing, Saitō was taken on as an apprentice sign painter in Otaru and by the age of twenty set up his own business designing signs for storefronts which provided him with a modest income. In Otaru he studied drawing with Narita Gyokusen 成田玉泉 (1902-1980) and experimented with painting in oil (i.e. Western-style or yōga painting.)  “Determined to avoid the poverty of his parents, he thought the only route open to him was that of commercial art.  But he also dreamed of being an oil painter”1 and in 1931-1932 moved to Tokyo taking work as a sign painter and studying Western-style painting at the private Hongō Kaiga Kenkyūjo [Hongō Painting Institute, founded in 1912 by Okada Saburōsuke (1869-1939) and Fujishima Takeji (1867-1943).] He was also drawn to Tokyo by the thought of joining Munakata Shikō’s (1903-1975) group of struggling young artists which he heard about through a local elementary school art teacher. While living in Otaru it is reported that he personally met Munakata, one of the towering figures in the sōsaku hanga (creative print) movement.

Print Making

In Tokyo, his oil paintings were exhibited under the auspices of a number of societies including Hakujitsukai (Midday Society), Nikakai (Second Division Society, in which Yasui Sōtarō participated), Kokugakai (National Picture Association) and Tokōkai (Eastern Light Society). However, his paintings did not receive the acclaim he hoped for, leading him to experiment with woodblock printmaking, at first using a single block which he carved himself and printed progressively, a self-taught skill. In describing Saitō’s prints during this initial phase of printing, curator Barry Till notes “…his methods were quite unusual. He started out making only once copy of each work but soon realized that he could produce many copies.” Petit relates that while at the Hongō Painting Institute he discovered that “the woodblock prints he had been experimenting with were a well-established form which could be produced in editions and could use more than one block.”3

Crediting the “clear vivid colors” in the woodblock prints of Western-style painter Yasui Sōtarō (1888–1955), Saitō began seriously producing his own prints in 1936 at the age 29.  It was not long before his prints were accepted for showing at the 1936 5th annual exhibition of the prestigious Nihon Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Print Association). While print making supplanted painting as Saitō’s main oeuvre, he maintained a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards the physical creation of a print, telling Statler in 1956 that “For me, the joy of making a print is not in working with the materials but in creating the design” and “when I’m trying for a new or complicated effect I have to do the work myself even though I don’t especially enjoy it.”4 A similar sentiment was conveyed to Gaston Petit in 1973 who writes “[Saitō] felt no urgent compulsion to make prints; he simply wanted to create a work of art.”5 

Winter in Aizu (会津の冬)

In 1937 the print division of the Kokugakai accepted one of his prints (along with one of his oil paintings) for showing at their 12th exhibition, but in 1938 he was stung by the Kokugakai’s rejection of his prints and paintings. Returning to Aizu in 1938 he began his print series Winter in Aizu depicting his childhood village until the age of four or five. These early prints began to establish his unique, easily recognizable style and were the basis for his first solo show in 1942 at the Kyūkyodō brush shop gallery in Ginza.  Saitō would continue to make prints depicting winter scenes in Aizu either titled Winter in Aizu or untitled throughout his career and there are over 100 prints that carry that title or depict Aizu under a blanket of snow.6 Some of these prints were made in numbered editions and some were made in open editions.

Winter in Aizu - Examples (reference only - not part of this collection)

In speaking about these first prints Oliver Statler relates:

These were important prints, but it took them a long time to assert themselves. The war intervened; he washed the pigments out of his canvases so that his wife could make them into clothing, but he guarded the blocks for the Aizu prints. "No matter how rough things were," he says, "or how often we had to move to keep a roof over our heads, I held on to those blocks. I couldn't say why, but I did."7  

In 1939 he joined Zōkei Hanga Kyōkai (Formative Print Society – also translated as Plastic Print Society) at the invitation of its founder, print maker Tadashige Ono (1909-1990). Tadashige’s group “imposed no standards to be met and offered Saitō the support group he needed in order to develop in his own way.”8 

Post-War

In 1944 Saitō took work at the Asahi Newspaper Company (most likely as an illustrator) where he was employed until 1954. It was while working at the Asahi in about 1945 that he met Onchi Kōshirō (1891-1955), a founding father of the creative print (sōsaku hanga) movement and the leading abstract print artist, who invited him to his First Thursday Society (Ichimokukai) where many of the sosaku hanga artists regularly met. Onchi included Saitō’s print Ginza in his second issue of Ichimokushū, a collection of prints by Ichimokukai members, published in May 1946. Saitō’s association with Onchi, who was courted by Western print lovers, would help him gain entry to various post-war exhibitions targeted at Western audiences.

His Oeuvre

In an attempt to define the first twenty years of Saitō’s prints, Statler tells us "'Saitō himself divides his work into three periods' - an early period dominated by the Aizu snow scenes, a period of realism beginning in 1945 typified by portraiture “and by 1950, a move toward simplification…”16 His later work merged modern elements of modernism, cubism, abstraction, and impressionism with Japanese tradition, after having been influenced by famous modern artists such as Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Gauguin, and Edvard Munch. His subject matter was diverse including Buddhist subjects, the buildings and culture of Kyoto, studies of ancient pottery (e.g., Haniwa burial figures), animals (particularly cats), flowers, bunraku, and landscapes of the countryside, most often with several anonymous solitary figures going about their everyday business and an array of prints based on his overseas travels. Saitō's prints, with their flat areas of color and solid textures, were the result of his search for the essentials of nature.

Examples of Prints by the Artist - reference only, not part of this collection

In the words of author and print connoisseur James Michener,  “Never static, he has progressed through many styles, always with distinction.”17 

Assistance in Print Production

Saitō created over 1000 prints during his lifetime.  As the number of his works grew he must have used multiple assistants, at least in the printing of large editions.  Kazuyuki Ohtsu (b. 1935), now a woodblock artist in his own right, was his assistant for forty years from 1958 until Saitō’s death and printed many of his works. The Adachi Print Institute (Adachi Colour Print Studio) also printed a number of his works, including print IHL Cat. #1514 in this collection and their mark, sometimes accompanied by a label pasted to the verso, appears on those prints, as shown below.  “Suri Ikegami” (Printer Ikegami) 摺 いけがみ appears on a number of Saitō’s works, as shown below, but beyond the presence of his stamp on the verso of some of Saitō’s prints (see IHL Cat. #1648) nothing appears about him in the literature.  As also shown below, a "self-carved self printed KIYOSHI SAITO" label can be found on a number of his earlier prints.

In his interview with Statler in 1956, Saitō commented on his use of “artisans” – “It’s not that I object to artisans in principle.  I’m perfectly willing that they copy my simpler things.  But when I’m trying for a new or complicated effect I have to do the work myself even though I don’t especially enjoy it.”18 

It is not clear to me at what age Saitō stopped designing and/or producing prints.  The last dated prints of his that I've come across are from his May in Aizu series that he created from 1988 into 1994 (see May in Aizu (I), 1988 and May in Aizu (9), 1994 above) when he was in his eighties.

Kiyoshi Saitō died on November 14, 1997 at the conclusion of a major retrospective in Tokyo at the Wako Department Store and shortly after he opened the Kiyoshi Saitō Museum of Art in Yanaizu which houses a collection of 850 of his works. (Go to https://www.town.yanaizu.fukushima.jp/bijutsu/tocurators/en/profile/ [accessed 11-27-23])

In 1956, Saitō told Statler “I’ve always done the kind of work I want to.” Perhaps this is a fitting epitaph for his long and distinguished career.

Collections

Saitō donated prints and blocks to various museums in Japan and the United States throughout his lifetime.  His work can be found in numerous collections including The Ringling (whose collection includes a number of early and rare works); The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Cincinnati Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; New York Public Library; Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Cleveland Museum of Art; University of Michigan Museum of Art; Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art; Kanagawa Prefectural Museum; British Museum; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; Gallery of New South Wales; Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art, Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Art; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Signatures and Seals of the Artist

Saitō's works are generally signed or printed with his name "Kiyoshi Saito" and carry his "kiyoshi" 清 seal.  A stamped "K. Saito" generally appears on the woodblock cards he created. 

Prints in Collection

click on thumbnail for print details