Stone Garden (Sekitei)

Like Sekino Jun'ichiro, Saito Kiyoshi moved toward simplicity in his prints. In this work Saito presents the famous stone garden of Ryoanji Temple in an extremely simplified manner, reducing everything to flat planes in black and white. The garden is depicted as a narrow, horizontal strip sandwiched between two broad planes of black: the tile-roofed wall at the top and the shadow cast by the temple building.

As a young man Saito was apprenticed to a sign painter and specialized in painted advertisements placed on the walls of public baths. His work has remained rooted in the real world of his personal experiences, such as the scenes of his boyhood in the north and of the snow landscapes of Aizu.