Catalog (175)

Haku Maki Poem 71-25 63/100 This print is the cover image of my book ,The life and works of Haku Maki I have never offered it for sale. the Front edicts Maki’s rendering of I or Me It is a bold big Red the red is embossed on a black ink field this print is 20 ‘ x 30” after being restored in the US by Michael Minckler it is in very good shape there is a crease on the front only visible from the back The print has great red kanji. Placed in a huge matte and framed it will stand out in any home. There have been no copies on sale for a number of years. Sold as is where is. Please ask for any additional information Thanks! Sold with signed certificate of authenticity. SHIPPING: All buyers should pay $100 for insured EMS USPS express shipping. But I will pay $50. RETURNS: Accepted within 7 Days of receipt should the description of the print not be accurate. Since my descriptions are as detailed as possible (see feedback), “buyer remorse” is not an acceptable reason to return the print. If you are uncertain about any information I’ve posted, please ask prior to purchasing. If returned, buyer pays return shipping and refund is for cost of print only. Print must be returned in same condition.

Poem 70-10 is the kanji for day 日. It is a striking, simply executed print. Created in 1970, it is now over a half-century old. The print is 17.5in W x 24.5in H, large (but not huge). As Daniel Tretiak has said: In 1970 quite suddenly Haku Maki started producing truly large prints. He tells us that this one was large but Maki was destined to do even larger ones, that year and in 1973.

This is a quite large Maki Persimmon print This is Work 74-67 Haku Maki did prints with Persimmon as a main theme from the early 1970s for well over a decade. This is a fairly large image: it shows one persimmon growing out from the tree, with leaves coming off the branch. The leaves are very clear: they have been tipped with shellac so they look very shiny . This is 43/154, here Maki used ink the color of the persimmon when putting his seal on the print. To the best of my knowledge this is only the second copy of this print I have seen in more than ten years. It was not treated well at the beginning of its life: a framing company put tape on it man-years ago and the tape remnants cannot be removed. They are shown in the images of the back. Otherwise condition is very good, the persimmon is clean front and back and the front is clean. Tape remnants on the front

22 31 This huge image was done in 1983 as a silk screen print. Condition is excellent overall except for tape remnants at the very top. These will not come through and will not affect the print when framed or shown to friends. The white circle sometimes called a Sun, shimmers as it does in many Maki prints. 27" x 31", 41/60 No chop For shipping Packed between two strong pieces of plywood.

Haku Maki in 1968 did a group of prints depicting animals from Asia’s Zodiac, which has an animal for each year in a 12-year cycle. Maki called this series of prints Animal Song. This one is Animal Song 申, the character for the Year of the Monkey. The print is square, measuring 17 1/8 in W x 17 1/8in H, and is in excellent condition.

Figure 1 is one of a large group of prints that were themselves usually large in size and in subject—one Chinese character in red on a black background. Daniel Tretiak called these prints Big Reds. Maki tended to insert one or more of such prints in the Figure, Poem and Work series. This Figure is number 8 of an edition of 50. It measures 14in wide X 21.75in high. There is tape residue on all four sides of the back—it has no impact on the front. Like virtually all of his Big Reds, this Maki print is striking, attention-getting in any room.

This dramatic Big Red—a name Daniel Tretiak attached to Haku Maki’s large red prints, usually of single Chinese characters (kanji) on black backgrounds—is a character meaning ordinary or commonplace. But Maki has done it in a stand-out way. It is 17.5in W x 24.5inH. NOTE: Dan Tretiak also referred to other large single-character ones of other colors as Big Yellow, Big Green, etc. See an interesting discussion of this between him and a friend at entry #1191431 below.

Haku Maki did some purely white prints—some had a small splash of color, others had none. This one, 81-3, offers three white plump persimmons. Persimmons were an oft-used subject, sometimes a single depiction of the fruit, sometimes two, but very rarely three persimmons and even more rarely done only in white. The print measures 9.5in W x 10.75in H and is in excellent condition. An edition of 130, this one is number 90.

This print is Haku Maki’s 78-6 水Water, number 108 in an edition of 151. Earlier that year,1978, he had already produced dramatic single-kanji large black and white prints. The first two, 78-1 Mountain and 78-2 Water, both horizontal prints, were 17in W x 9.25in H. They were followed soon after by 78-6, also horizontal. But this depiction of the kanji for water is nearly twice the size of the previous two: his 78-6 is 32.5 inches wide and 17 inches high (83cm W X 43.5cm H). Hence, the drama of his black-and-white calligraphy is here even more pronounced. The print is embossed and carries some calligraphy in the upper right quadrant of the print that he applied by hand, after drawing the prints.

In his book Daniel Tretiak says: “Maki’s kanji prints were normally of one main color against a white or black background. Poem 71-29 below is an exception—and all the more interesting because of it. In this print, Maki has created an abstract Person—the splashes of color show the head, eyes, shoulder, and two legs.” It measures 8.75in W X 12in H and is no. 73 of an edition of 152.

The dramatic Poem 70-37 is the kanji for Self已. It measures 17.5in W x 24in H and is in very good condition.(There is slight toning in the margins.)

Dragons—or at least the kanji for them—featured often in Haku Maki’s work. Work 73-12A –black kanji on white—came out first in 1973 and was followed quickly by a black dragon on red (which follows this one on this site). It measures 11.5inW x 15.25inH, is 16 of an edition of 103, and is in good condition

Through his career, Haku Maki did a wide array of Chinese characters used in the Japanese language as well (kanji). The large prints that Daniel Tretiak called Big Reds were such kanji. Among Maki’s depictions were black kanji on white backgrounds, some stark, some playful, some easily decipherable, others with which he took great liberties. The artistic possibilities that kanji offered were a fascination of his. This broad-brushed embossed print, Poem 72-55, was done in 1972. It measures 9 3/8in W x 10.5in H and is no. 4 of an edition of 202. The print is in good condition; there are tape remnants on the four corners of the back but they have no impact on the face.

Done in 1992, Poem 5 is a very stylized take on the kanji for woman女. Maki did many, many versions of woman. All of them are interesting, most of them striking. To me, this dramatic rendering strays the furthest from the actual character. Daniel Tretiak called this a Square Woman. This was done using the silkscreen process; it is not an embossed woodblock print. It measures 11.5in x 11.5 in.

Daniel Tretiak tells us that in 1967 Haku Maki produced an alphabet series, Poem A-Z. He did all the letters of the English alphabet. This is Poem W, a strong rendering of the hiragana for You. Tretiak says: The image has a bold white sun in the top half with two dashes of rain-like strokes. It is in wonderful condition. The print is number 23 of an edition of 50. It measures 17.25 inches square. Note also that this print is an early one which he signed in the left corner below his seal. Later he mostly signed in the right margin.

Every so often, Maki decided to create an all-white print to which he added two or three small bits of color. Daniel Tretiak talked of Maki’s fondness for adding balance to his prints especially with the use of moons or splashes of color. Poem Y is an example. The print is beautifully textured with the colored spots placed in smooth areas among the overall embossing. It measures 17 1/8 square inches and is no.15 of an edition of 50.

What fun this print is—a swirl of kanji virtually unreadable but a delight to the eye. 79-9 was done in 1979 and measures 9.25in W x 10.75in H. The print is in excellent condition.

This print Z-446B was one of a small number of creations that he put on hard, gold-edged board. Daniel Tretiak wrote that these prints “were printed first on very thin paper, which was then ‘wrapped’ around heavy shikishi board. They are lithographs not done from wood blocks. Done in 1999, this work measures 7.25in x 8.25in, is in excellent condition, and one of an edition of 77.