Asano Takeji (1900 - 1999)

Asano Takeji was born in Kyoto in 1900. He studied at the Kyoto School of Fine Arts (graduating in 1919) and then at the Kyoto Municipal School of Painting until 1923. He specialized in landscape prints and produced several series on the Kyoto and Osaka region.
In 1929 he was active in the formation of the Kyoto Sôsaku-Hangakai (Sôsaku Print Association), and in 1930 he participated with Tokuriki Tomikichirô and Benji Asada in creating the series "Creative prints of twelve months in new Kyoto".
In 1947, he created a beautiful series, which he engraved and printed himself: Kinki meisho fukei – Famous Views of the Kinki Region (Osaka-Kyoto). He worked extensively for Unsodô Publishing, producing dozens of Shin-hanga style prints from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. He then created series of Sôsaku-hanga (creative prints) style prints depicting landscapes of Japan (and occasionally abroad), its mountains, ports, capes, lakes, and more. In the Sôsaku-hanga style, the artist is both engraver and printer, mastering the entire creative process. He continued working in the 1970s and 1980s on simpler, almost naive, often humorous black and white prints. He taught printmaking and drawing until 1997 and continued to paint until his death in 1999.