• 362-S silkscreen from his abacus series
362-S silkscreen from his abacus series
362-S silkscreen from his abacus series

Sekine Yoshio (関根美夫) (artist 1922 – 1989)

362-S silkscreen from his abacus series

Print


1976
21.5 in x 28 in (Overall dimensions) silkscreen
Signed: Y. Sekine
Title: 362-s
Date: 1976
Numbered: 39/50
National Museum of Asian Art - another abacus silkscreen print from 1973
Los Angeles County Museum of Art - a 1975 abacus silkscreen print
National Museum of Art, Osaka - 1971 oil painting on the abacus theme
National Museum of Art, Osaka - 1963 oil painting on the abacus theme
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto - 1968 silkscreen diptych
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto - 1965 abacus themed oil painting " Sekine began painting the abacus in 1963, a single-minded subject that he... explored in many prints."

"The bold red circle acts provides a telescopic view, enlarging the abacas counters within its circumference. One is also attracted to the contrast between lustrous and matte inks, which add dimensionality and a surprisngly rich surface texture."

Both quotes are from John Fiorillo's web site.

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On May 23, 1982 it said in the New York Times "Yoshio Sekine also achieves this type of synthesis in his prints, whose repetitious patterns and mathematical organization are stylizations of the abacus, the ancient calculator. The flattening and simplification of the designs are characteristic of a form of international modernism that does not have its roots in Japan, but the imagery could hardly be more appropriate to symbolize abstraction as a concept familiar to the Oriental sensibility."