I first discovered Kazumi's work while browsing through a Petit Gaston "44 modern Japanese print artists" at the Montclair Book Center. I was immediately amazed by his works which were geometrical combinations of colors along with deep embossing on paper. The faded colored areas next to highly colored areas immediately intrigued me and I started to research his works.
 
I then realized that Kazumi had an amazing life as a print artist for over 50 years yet his name and his artworks are unknown to most common people. It is not until I met Jim Horton from the Gallery of Graphic Arts that I was able to get a more in depth knowledge of his artistic works on paper. The techniques that he used of the years made him truly unique as they reflect the natural evolution of his life.
 
His early works were the one of a classical Japanese woodblock print student. The student quickly left his mentor to became a print master of his own. His figurative style gave way to abstract and precise geometrical patterns. They were composed mostly of darker colors and made of straight rectangular lines with no embossing.
 
After coming to the USA in 1971, the colors became vibrant and the strength of his life is showing in the deep embossing of his prints. The pressure of his baren on the paper became visible on both side of the paper which created amazing textured works. The inkless pressed forms on paper became the center of attention of the print in perfect harmony next to the inked areas. Some of my favorite works during this era incorporated newspapers ads or articles directly on the print. The ink of the newspaper stayed on the woodblock after using chemicals and it was only clearly visible for a few prints at a time forcing him to use several newspapers in a print series. He made similar prints with newspaper articles in English, Japanese and Greek.

Later he started an innovative print technique which consisted of inking separate color sheets of papers, cuting them in small squares and glueing them together to create larger size prints alternating both colors. These collages were so time consuming and making editions of them must have required much dedication and attention to details. One of my favorite print is a oversize swirl print that has many different colors in it. Optical art was very popular is the 70's but Kazumi really had his own twist in creating eye catching prints.
 
In the late 1980's and early 90's, his style changed as he didn't have the strength of pressing on his baren yet his creative mind didn't show any sign of slowing down. His prints were made of multi colored dots that were very popular in that period with artist like Roy Lichtenstein.
 
During his 50 year career, Kazumi Amano covered so many subjects using very different techniques and the sole purpose of this website is to share the beauty of this work over the year.