Teruhide Kato

加藤晃秀 · 1936–2015

After being educated at Kyoto Art College, Teruhide Kato (1936–2015) started his artistic career as a Kyoto-based kimono designer, became a successful painter and in the last decades of his life also a woodblock print artist. Such career transitions are more common than they might seem. Kimono design has long shared patterns, themes and visual expression in general with Japanese painting and woodblock printing. In practice, there are often close business relationships between people working in these arts in Kyoto. Most famously perhaps, the woodblock print publisher Unsodo started out as a publisher of kimono pattern books. Not surprisingly, it was Unsodo that recognized Teruhide Kato as a potential source of woodblock print designs and started to collaborate with him to produce them.

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By then, Teruhide Kato had already achieved international fame as a painter. A 1991 exhibition in New York was a great success, as was the book devoted to his work, Kyoto Romance. The book combined images of his paintings with various short poems related to the works. Even from the reproductions of his paintings in the book, it is easy to see how suitable his paintings would be as a source for woodblock prints, as they are strongly atmospheric and have fine lines that seem almost to have been chosen to be transferred to woodblock print key-lines.

With Unsodo, Teruhide Kato worked in traditional ukiyo-e production fashion. His designs were the basis of the woodblock prints, but the woodblocks were carved and printed by craftsmen selected by Unsodo. The publisher provided guidance to make the woodblock prints not only an artistic but also a commercial success, for many prints choosing the tall and narrow tanzaku format. Teruhide Kato's prints often show interesting compositions, depicting famous places in and around Kyoto in novel ways, or from unusual directions: the thousand torii gates of Fushimi Inari shrine, Kinkaku-ji and Kiyomizu-dera temples, the entrance gate of Yasaka shrine, or the alleys of Gion, often combined with the full moon, bamboo, autumn leaves or cherry blossoms. Many of these prints have a meditative quality, focusing on aesthetic details in architecture, such as rooftop tiles or parts of bridges, or in nature.

Teruhide Kato's woodblock prints carry his artist seal. Lifetime editions are hand-signed by the artist. Except for one design, the prints all come as unlimited editions and are unnumbered. Teruhide Kato's signature comes in two shapes, one in long form, and one in short, used by him when he was ill near the end of his life. It has been said that for some of his prints his wife continued using the short form signature for a short while after his passing. As such, prints with his short form signature should be dated circa 2015, and not necessarily as lifetime editions. His wife kept applying his artist seal, so posthumous editions all carry it as well, and Unsodo has kept publishing his prints to this day.