| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Noboru Sawai was a print-maker renowned for combining the traditions and techniques of East and West in his work. He trained in the United States, earning a BA in 1966 and an MFA in 1969, both in Minnesota. He returned briefly to Japan in 1971 to study wood-block printing with Toshi Yoshida, at the International Hanga Academy, Tokyo. He then taught drawing and print-making at the University of Calgary for 22 years, until his retirement in 1993. He established a print-making studio in Vancouver, the Sawai Atelier, specializing in combining Western etching and traditional Japanese relief (woodcut) printing.
Sawai drew on images from Japanese shunga (erotic) and 17th-century ukiyo-e art (particularly the images of courtesans and pleasure districts), as well as on European art traditions. He found a way to counterpoint, and counter-print, the two art traditions and printing styles within the same image. For example, “Funeral” (1972) is based on the 19th-century French painter Courbet’s “Burial at Ornans”. Hovering in the sky above a freshly-dug grave, where a sacred image would normally be, is an erotic scene. “The Great Tribunal” (1973), depicts a 19th-century art salon attended by European male spectators, rendered in black & white outline, with samples of erotica hung on the walls. A Japanese shunga print, rendered in delicate colour, takes pride of place on an easel in the centre. The print subtly questions both artistic taste and those who pass judgement on it. Other works of his make reference to Picasso and Botticelli. These received contradictory reviews, being either condemned as obscene or praised for their genius. Sawai was generally highly regarded for his technical expertise, as well as for his sensuality, humour and intellectual cleverness in combining images and traditions.
He also taught wood-block printing to Inuit communities in Cape Dorset, Pangnirtung and Baker Lake, subsequently drawing on Inuit picture-making traditions in his own work (“Inuit Dream” and “Inuit Fable”, 1983) as a result of his time there. Noboru’s interests also extended to paper-making. He returned several times to Japan to learn how to make and experiment with his own hand-made paper.
He was a member of the Alberta Society of Artists, the Japan Printmakers’ Association, and the Print and Drawing Council of Canada. His work appears in collections in Calgary at the Nickle Arts and at the Glenbow Museums; the University of Toronto and the CBC; the National Gallery, Ottawa; and at the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv. His work has been exhibited in Europe and the US.
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