Yasuhide Kobashi Prints and Multiples

Yasuhide Kobashi (古橋 矢須秀 Kobashi Yasuhide, 1931–2003) was a Japanese woodblock print artist, painter, sculptor and stage designer. He was born in Kojima in Okayama Prefecture. His father was a ceramic clay artist and head of the Kyoto Industrial Craft Company. Kobashi learned printmaking from the sōsaku hanga (creative prints) master Unichi Hiratsuka (1895–1997). In 1955, Kobashi graduated from the Kyoto College of Crafts and Textiles, and in 1959, he moved to New York City. At first he was sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein of the New York City Ballet, who had visited his studio in Kyoto and commissioned a number of works from him. Elaine De Kooning, art critic and wife of influential Abstract Expressionist Willem De Kooning recommended Kobashi to the Allan Stone Gallery, He would continue to work with this gallery for more than 30 years. When Kobashi moved to New York in 1959, many American intellectuals and artists were eager to learn about Japan. Among the early influences to reach a wide cross section of American society was Suzuki Daisetsu's (1870-1966) Introduction to Zen Buddhism, published in English in 1949 with a preface by the noted psychologist Carl Jung. Nelson Rockefeller (governor of New York and later vice-president) was Kobashi's patron, and acquired one of the artist's sculptures for the New York State Executive Mansion in Albany. As a young man he was exposed to a wide range of arts, including sculpture, stage design, carpentry, stone cutting, ceramics, calligraphy, painting, and furniture design. Most notably, he studied woodblock printmaking under Hiratsuka Unichi (1895-1997), one of the leading innovators in the Creative Print (ssaku-hanga) movement that advocated total artistic control by a single artist over the entire printmaking process, in contrast to the traditional methods of ukiyo-e in which designer, carver, printer, and publisher all had a role in production. Kobashi is best known for his sosaku hanga woodblock prints and his sculptures intended to be rearranged, which he called "self-constructions". The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA New York City), the Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, New York), the Albright Knox, the Weisman Art Museum (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis), and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville are among the public collections holding work by Kobashi. Yasuhide Kobashi created some of his first prints in New York at the Pratt Graphic Art Center. He became a member of the Society of Independent Artists and exhibited regularly with them. He is included in the book JAPANESE SCULPTORS: Isamu Noguchi, Yayoi Kusama, Akio Takamori, Yoshimoto Nara...