[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

TANAKA Ryohei / 田中良平 [born 1933; Japanese]

etching /

During the 1960s, the Ferdinand Roten Galleries of Baltimore, Maryland promoted the more affordable collecting of prints on paper — etching, engraving, lithograph, silkscreen, and other media — particularly by college students across the United States. Before Roten died in 1972, his vans criss-crossed North America, stuffed with artwork, much of it comissioned by Roten himself and offered in low-priced editions to college students. Tanaka was then in his thirties and a staple in the Roten catalogue.  Other works in the collection (by Robert Marx and Walter Cleveland) were acquired this way.

Tanaka’s prints represent the traditional arts and crafts of Japan, especially the vernacular architecture one find in rural villages and the countryside.