In 1979, just as Higashiyama Kaii was completing a career-defining series of wall paintings for Toshodai-ji Temple’s Miei-do Hall, he also published a collection of lithographs depicting winter landscapes titled Winter Poetry. With the wall paintings requiring a near decade-long journey of self-contemplation and solitary reckoning with the spirit of the Chinese monk Jianzhen, Kaii must have seen the creation of the prints, which would ultimately pass into the possession of a large number of people, as an important means of expression. This painting is based on one of the Winter Poetry prints. The gnarled old trees stand out against the blue sky, conveying the irrepressibility of the life force within. The painter wrote, “I feel that the true forms of trees are only visible when they have shed their leaves in the winter.”
(UCHIYAMA Junko)
In 1979, just as Higashiyama Kaii was completing a career-defining series of wall paintings for Toshodai-ji Temple’s Miei-do Hall, he also published a collection of lithographs depicting winter landscapes titled Winter Poetry. With the wall paintings requiring a near decade-long journey of self-contemplation and solitary reckoning with the spirit of the Chinese monk Jianzhen, Kaii must have seen the creation of the prints, which would ultimately pass into the possession of a large number of people, as an important means of expression. This painting is based on one of the Winter Poetry prints. The gnarled old trees stand out against the blue sky, conveying the irrepressibility of the life force within. The painter wrote, “I feel that the true forms of trees are only visible when they have shed their leaves in the winter.”
(UCHIYAMA Junko)