Edition: 45/100. Woodblock print; ink on paper.This is a fine, interesting work by this woman artist, indicative of modern Japanese artist-intellectuals' interest in Western philosophers. Born in Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku, Matsubara Naoko grew up mostly in the city of Kyoto. Her father was one of the most senior Shinto priests in Japan, and her mother came from a very old Shinto family. After graduating from the Kyoto Academy of Fine Arts (now Kyoto Fine Arts University), she went to the United States as a Fulbright scholar, spending a year at the Carnegie Institute of Art (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, where she received her MFA.
