A student of Kaburagi Kiyokata, a master of bijin-ga genre, Kasamatsu studied Japanese style painting (Nihonga). Shiro's paintings were shown at several prestigious exhibitions and they caught the eye of the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo. Kasamatsu started creating woodblock prints for Watanabe in 1919, specializing in landscape prints. Until the late 1940s he had designed more than 50 prints for Watanabe. After World War II, he stopped working with Watanabe. However, it would be nearly a decade before Shiro began producing his own prints. In the meantime, he established a short collaboration with Unsodo, a publisher in Kyoto, designing landscape and animal prints. By the late 1950's, Shiro was ready to break out on his own. He began carving and printing his own designs in limited, numbered editions. Although Shiro's self-made prints lack the refined carving of his shin hanga designs, they have a simplicity and expressiveness that is very appealing. Shiro continued to create prints for several decades, but never promoted them through exhibitions or gallery affiliations |
