Artist: Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996)
Title: The Well at Samaria
Year: 1974
Medium: Japanese Stencil Dyeing (kappazuri)
Paper: Momigami paper
Size within the mat: 23 x 20 inches
Sheet Size: 25 x 23 inches
Matted size: 29 x 25.75 inches
Edition Size: 70; This one: 2/70
Signature: Signature, date lower right
This fine print is immediately recognizable as the work of Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996). It depicts Christ at the well in Samaria. The print and mat are in very good condition. The print is attached with three archival hinges to a mounting matboard and is covered with a cream-colored mat. The mat and backing matboard are acid-free. There is no matline to indicate fading of the print. Please see the pictures. Please note that there are a number of color variations of this print. I have seen other versions of this print in which the arches are yellow, the pail is also yellow, the roof is green and black and the white and dark green elements of the male figure’s clothing are reversed.
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Sadao Watanabe was born and raised in Tokyo. Watanabe was famous for his biblical prints rendered in the mingei (folk art) tradition of Japan. As a student of the master textile dye artist Serizawa Keisuke (1895–1984), Watanabe was associated with the mingei (folk art) movement.
Watanabe's father died when he was ten years old. He dropped out of school at an early age and became an apprentice in a dyer's shop. A Christian woman in his neighborhood invited the fatherless boy to attend church with her. At the age of seventeen, Watanabe received baptism. The young Watanabe worked in dyers' shops, sketching patterns and dyeing clothes. In 1937, one year after Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961), father of the Japanese mingei (folk art) movement, had established the Folk Art Museum, the 24-year-old Watanabe saw an exhibition of Serizawa Keisuke's (1895–1984) work. The event sowed the seeds of Watanabe's artistic endeavor. A few years later, Watanabe attended a study group in which Serizawa taught his katazome technique of stencilling and dyeing, which originated in Okinawa. From then on, the teacher-and-student relationship between Serizawa and Watanabe became strong and abiding.
The subject matter of Watanabe's prints is exclusively the gospel rendered in the mingei (folk art) approach. Influenced by Buddhist figure prints, Watanabe placed biblical subjects in a Japanese context. In The Last Supper (1981) Watanabe depicts the disciples in kimono. On the table are bottles of sake and sushi.
Watanabe uses kozo paper (from mulberry tree) and momigami (kneaded paper). The momigami paper was crumpled by hand, squeezed and wrinkled to give a rough quality to the prints. The katazome method uses traditional organic and mineral pigments in a medium of soybean milk. The protein in the milk bound the colors to the paper's surface. The use of natural materials is one of the characteristics of mingei (folk art).
In 1958, Watanabe received first prize at the Modern Japanese Print Exhibition held in New York City for The Bronze Serpent showing Moses and the people of Israel. Watanabe's Kiku ("Listening") (1960) was featured in the novelist James Michener's The Modern Japanese Print (1962), a book that introduced ten sōsaku-hanga artists to the Western audience.
The Vatican Museum, the British Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, Gallery 1252 in Klaipeda and many other leading museums in the world had exhibited Watanabe's works. During President Lyndon Johnson's administration, Watanabe's prints were hung in the White House.
Watanabe once remarked that he preferred that his prints hang in the ordinary places of life: "I would most like to see them [his prints] hanging where people ordinarily gather, because Jesus brought the gospel for the people". Such is the mingei philosophy of art for the people and by the people.