Mabuchi Toru Portrait Prints

Mabuchi Toru was born in 1920 in Tokyo as the son of a woodblock engraver and artist. His father was his first teacher. Later, he entered the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and became a student of the sōsaku-hanga artist Un'ichi Hiratsuka. Toru graduated from Tokyo University in 1941 at the beginning of the Pacific War. After the war, Toru became a full-time artist. Among the artists of the sōsaku-hanga art movement, he is rather unique due to a strange technique that he had developed himself. The website of the British Museum describes it as follows: "By this time he had developed a unique way of printing which is close to Pointillism. He cuts up very thin wood into small pieces, which he then glues to his block in a mosaic-like pattern. A large number of these may go to make one print. His production is therefore rather small." Favorite themes of the artist are landscapes, still lifes and pottery. Mabuchi Toru died in 1994.