KARHU

For more than thirty years The Tolman Collection has ended its year with the release of the following year's prints and the New Year’s calendar of Clifton Karhu. This year due to a long bout of ill health Mr. Karhu has not made any new prints, but of course he has made his famous calendars; this year marking the year of the boar (inoshishi).  Because, in part, of the success of our book, "Karhu @ 77, A Personal Tribute," we have already run out of prints, and have only a limited number on hand.  However, since our many clients have come to expect some visual treat from Mr. Karhu to complete their year, and never wanting to be the ones to disappoint anyone, we have come up with an idea that we hope will please you.

In addition to releasing the sought-after calendars, this year we have decided to showcase sixteen watercolors that the artist painted in the 1960s.  At that point, with help from Tetsuo Yamada, Karhu's earliest admirer and encourager, Mr. Karhu had begun to tinker with the idea that his original paintings, done in oil, watercolor, and sumi, might easily be translated into woodblock prints.  It was Mr. Yamada's words of praise, offered each time he viewed Karhu's works, that got him to start out on the long road of printmaking and resulted in his pre-eminent position as the leading American woodblock artist in Japan.

Founder of Kyoto's well-known Yamada Gallery, Yamada was a talented person of the arts who had to choose between being an artist or becoming an art dealer.  Although he chose art dealer, he had already developed enough skills to offer Karhu basic knowledge of the fundamentals of woodblock techniques.  As Karhu progressed, Yamada introduced him to a professional printer who cleared away all the questions in the budding artist's mind.  So as far as technique was concerned Karhu was able to be at ease with the Japanese way of doing things right from the start and did not have to "un-learn" a preconceived western way of printmaking before delving into the Japanese method.

At around this time, the American artist, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, (1890-1973) had come to spend some more time in Kyoto where he had already lived in the late '30s.  This artist had previously lived in Paris and become known as a colorist and made paintings of distinction.  While living in the Kenninji Temple he amused himself puttering around in Kyoto and by chance bumped into the young Karhu at Nakajima Gentaro's gallery, where even I have enjoyed discovering "finds" all these many years.  That meeting led to a friendship which developed into a special relationship which resulted in them jointly producing a portfolio called "Haiga" which featured 20 color prints, the originals of which were made by MacDonald-Wright and the blocks by Karhu.  So we can say that it was during this process that Karhu was taught the special theory of color espoused by MacDonald-Wright and adapted it to suit his own work.

I am sure that anyone who has ever visited The Tolman Collection is aware of the high esteem in which Karhu is held by everyone in our gallery.  It was his work with which we first started out; they are his wonderful prints of the Kyoto of our dreams that have made our name well known; it is his image of our building that composes our gallery logo which appears on our meishi, our stationary, and every letter that leaves this building.  It is his work that we have sold every day for more than thirty-five years, and which we are surrounded with always.  The chance to see the source of all these works is something that you should not miss.

The watercolors were made before, during, and just after his encounter with the famous artist, and even the origins of some of Karhu's early prints can be discovered by those collectors who are familiar with his prints.  A careful perusal will show that the subject matter is obviously Karhu, and a leisurely viewing will give great pleasure to viewers who take the time to slowly contemplate how the talent for merging idea with color came about.

Norman Tolman

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