Japanese Woodblock Calendars 2020-2021

The art of Japanese woodblock prints is fabulous. I don’t know how they get those nuanced colors to combine with the sharp lines and the fascinating shapes. Calendars featuring this art form, usually showing off 19th or early 20th century woodblock prints, are a beautiful addition to any home. Using both soft and bold palettes, the various artists represented here are primarily from the Shin Hanga movement, which signaled a rebirth of the Japanese print in the early twentieth century. The Artists created simple masterpieces, capturing the essence of nature’s perfection.

See current Calendars featuring Japanese Woodblock Art.

Woodblock printing was invented in China around the year 200. However it was not adopted in Japan till the 17th century. However, when it did catch on, it became a major force in not only the printing of books, but also art production. The combination of color and clear lines make these pieces of art an enduring legacy often used on woodblock calendars and art planners.

orange-circle-japanese-woodblock-calendar Orange Circle Wall Calendar, Japanese Woodblocks: Prints of the floating world.

16-month wall calendar printed on heavy Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper using soy-based inks.

 japanese-woodblock-vintage-calendar Vintage Classic Japanese Woodblocks Desk Calendar, 6″ x 6 1/2″

Monthly desk calendar that starts at January 2013 and lasts through December 2013.

Printed on acid free laid cream paper.

Japanese Woodblock Wall Calendar  Kawase Hasui (1883 – 1957)

Woodblock prints showing temples and landscapes in Japan. Printed on heavy ivory-colored paper, this calendar features twelve vintage and historic images reproduced in full color.

  woodblock-engagement-calendar-planner-japanJapanese Woodblock Weekly Engagement Planner

Size Closed: 8.5 ” x 6.25 ” Size Opened: 8.5 ” x 12.0 “, wire bound and soft cover date book.

From the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

The Japanese artists featured here are mostly from the Shin Hanga movement, which signaled a rebirth of the Japanese print in the early twentieth century. Their simple style feels very modern.

(12×12) Japanese Woodblock Prints – 16-Month Wall Calendar

This is perhaps the most colorful calendar on this page. You’ll find familiar classics as well as new favorites.

Famous Japanese woodblock prints artists

During Japan’s Edo period (1615-1868), art schools flourished, producing richly colored woodblock prints for a newly prosperous middle class.

Katsushika Hokusai

Famous for his 36 views of Mount Fuji, Katsushika Hokusai was the most renowned ukiyo-e painter and print maker of his time. 

Kitagawa Utamaro

An eclectic woodblock print artist living at the end of the 18th century, Kitagawa Utamaro is best known for his depictions of women’s faces.

Tōshūsai Sharaku

Aggression is absent from most woodblock calendars these days, but not from the prints by Tōshūsai Sharaku. He put a wealth of expression into his subjects.

Utagawa Hiroshige

One of the last famous woodblock print artists of Japan, Utagawa Hiroshige created an art that has the stylized, almost abstract, quality we expect from the genre. Hiroshige was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Though he captured a variety of subjects, his greatest talent was in creating landscapes of his native Edo and his final masterpiece was a series known as “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”.

Literally meaning “pictures of the floating world”, ukiyo-e refers to the famous Japanese woodblock print genre that originated in the 17th century and is practically synonymous with the Western world’s visual characterization of Japan.

Chikanobu Wall Calendars

During the Meiji era (1868 – 1912), Japan opened to the West and experienced rapid modernization, and Hashimoto Chikanobu (1838 – 1912) adeptly chronicled the social and political shifts then occurring. A prolific woodblock artist, Chikanobu is best known for his triptychs – where the painting is spread over three canvases.

Japanese Woodblocks Wall Calendar
Discover the “Art of the Floating World” and be transported to Japan’s colorful landscapes, crashing waves, and elegant bridges. Featuring Japanese Woodblock printing masters, this collection of prints dates as far back as 1823.

Kazuyuki Ohtsu Serenity Wall Calendar 
Born in Gunma prefecture in Japan, Kazuyuki Ohtsu moved to Tokyo at nineteen to study traditional woodblock printmaking. For forty years Ohtsu (b. 1935) served as an assistant to Kiyoshi Saito, a woodblock artist at the forefront of the sosaku hanga (creative print) movement.

Japanese Woodblocks Studio Redux Wall Calendar
Discover the “Art of the Floating World” and be transported to Japan’s colorful landscapes, crashing waves, and elegant bridges. Featuring Japanese Woodblock printing masters, this collection of prints dates as far back as 1823. Elegant rounded corners.

Japanese Woodblocks Wall Calendar
For centuries, Japanese printmakers have used incredible skill, precision, and imagination to create images of lasting beauty. Enjoy a year of ukiyo-e, or “Pictures of the Floating World,” an art form that celebrates pleasure and a love for nature.

Samurai Wall Calendar
From the twelfth century to the nineteenth, Japanese warriors relied on bows and arrows, spears and halberds, even matchlock guns, yet the most characteristic weapon of the time was the sword. The man who bore it was a samurai, his life ruled by a stern code.

Hiroshige Poster Calendar
Hiroshige was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Though he captured a variety of subjects, his greatest talent was in creating landscapes of his native Edo and his final masterpiece was a series known as “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”.

Hashimoto Chikanobu Wall Calendar
Japan experienced rapid modernization during the Meiji era (1868–1912) as Western customs and technology were adopted. Despite the growth of photography and lithography, Hashimoto Chikanobu (1838–1912) became a successful artist using the time-honored woodblock print.

Japanese Scrolls & Screen Paintings Wall Calendar
Japanese scrolls and screen paintings reveal a variety of influences, including Chinese painting and calligraphy, Buddhist iconography, and Japanese literature, and their subjects range from portraits to scenes from mythology, scripture, everyday life, and nature.

Japanese Woodblock Prints Wall Calendar
Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige are great 18th- and 19th-century masters of the Japanese woodblock style known as ukiyo-e (oo’-kee-yoh-ay), “pictures of the floating world”.

Kawase Hasui Wall Calendar
Kawase Hasui contributed peaceful landscape scenes to the revival of fine-art printing in twentieth-century Japan. A leading artist of the shin hanga (creative print) movement, Hasui (1883–1957) brought his watercolors to the renowned printing studio of Watanabe Shozaburo.

Art of Japanese Woodblocks Wall Calendar
The Art of Japanese Woodblocks celebrates an ancient art form combining painting, engraving and printing. Traditional subjects—landscapes, nature and women—are beautifully depicted in 13 richly hued illustrations.

Japanese Woodblock Prints Wall Calendar
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s splendid collection of Japanese woodblock prints from Katsushika Hokusai’s and Utagawa Hiroshige’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces provides the illustrations for this calendar.

Hiroshige Wall Calendar
The pictures of Utagawa Hiroshige convey a sense of timeless repose even as they capture fleeting seasonal changes. But as a photograph taken today at any place depicted in Hiroshige’s celebrated series would instantly reveal, these scenes are very much of a certain era.

A long time favorite with artists and art lovers, Japanese woodblock prints are as popular now as they were in the 19th century when they inspired artists like Vincent van Gogh.

Their illusive colors, beautiful lines, visions of nature and all round Japanese atmosphere have defined what we think of when we hear the word ‘Zen’.

Calendars featuring these woodblock prints are a great way to get a taste of Japan right in your home.

Also see Katsushika Hokusai woodblock prints calendars and these Japanese calendars.

Posted on Categories Fine Art