Ōta Ryūichi (1915–1994) 
Calm 
Japan, 1956 
Two-panel screen; ink and color on paper 
Gift of Terry Welch, 2021 (2021-03-092b)

VIEW HI-RES IMAGE 
 
Made in the year after Dusk, this screen was also selected for the annual national exhibition. Calm continues to develop the themes found in the previous work. Here the autumn fields have been moved to the foreground, bordered by luminous yellow trees that mark the boundary with the mostly obscured midground, in which more autumn trees spread across uncultivated land. Once again Ryūichi upsets the balance of the composition, this time by compressing the foreground/midground into the lower quarter of the screen, over which dark background mountains tower almost to the upper edge. 
 
Remarkably, the annual national exhibition was held through WWII until 1944 and resumed almost immediately after the war in 1946. In 1958, only two years after Ryūichi submitted Calm, its government sponsorship ceased, and the exhibition has been managed by a private non–profit organization ever since.