Saru Gallery
       Japanese Prints & Japanese Paintings

Biography Kinoshita, Tomio (1923 - ?)

Kinoshita Tomio arrived rather late on the field of Sosaku Hanga. In 1941 he graduated at the Nagoya School of Industrial Arts, and he was sent to Manchuria for two years to woirk as a lens polisher. His wife taught him the craft of carving seals, and around 1955 he began making prints, inspired by the work of Un'ichi Hiratsuka. He cut many of his blocks entirely with a single cutting tool, either a flat chisel or a U-shaped gouge (komasuki). He used it to cut jagged parallel lines to define shapes such as the faces and bodies of partly abstracted human beings. in 1962 one of these prints was included in James Michener's monumental work The Modern Japanese Print. His prints were shown at many international exhibitions, and they established his fame. In the eighties he stopped making prints, and returned to seal-carving.