The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of December 21, 2025
Flower Garden
1963
(Japanese, 1913–1996)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William E. Ward 1982.355
Location: Not on view
Description
Watanabe is associated with the Japanese folk art movement that admired traditional crafts, like stencil, for their unpretentiousness. Here, Watanabe employed wrinkled handmade paper, commonly used for book covers and endpapers, to add texture to the broad areas of flat color and to emphasize the rough, handcrafted quality of his prints. The unsophisticated, folk-like images allude to early Japanese Buddhist prints, in which black lines, rich color contrasts, and simple naïve forms are paramount. Being a Christian, Watanabe often chose religious themes from the Bible.- Mr. and Mrs. William E. Ward, Solon
- Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; December 12, 2004- April 10, 2005. "Visions of Japan: Prints and Paintings from Cleveland Collections".A Tradition Transformed: Japanese Prints, 1947-1987. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 9-April 24, 1988).The Year in Review for 1983. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 22-April 8, 1984).CMA Bulletin, LXXI (February 1984), p. 76, no. 212
- {{cite web|title=Flower Garden|url=false|author=Sadao Watanabe|year=1963|access-date=21 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1982.355