Turtle Trips

Contemporary Japanese Print Exhibition, 1970

One year ago I posted a series of prints by one of my favorite

Japanese artists and graphic designers, Kiyoshi Awazu. 

Awazu was an endlessly curious man, who in his long and
productive career explored many different subjects and genres.
In the 1970s, a period in which his style was rather psychedelic,
turtles became one of the recurrent motifs in his work.

Magazine cover, 1971

 Mano-Dharma concert poster, 1973

Mural, 1973

"Turtles were pilots of foresight and fortune tellers in ancient China 

and were geometrically similar to the Chinese octagon direction board.
This similarity in form lead to a similarity in function - the board was used 

for reading faces and for the auspicious location of houses and the turtle 

was taken as the mysterious pilot and guardian deity of the people.
There are some shrines of this sort in kyushu. The turtles that appear here 

used to live around Okinawa. The older ones have been swimming 

on the ocean bottom for two hundred years."

From Kiyoshi Awazu's website. 

Quartier Parco poster, 1973

Illustration, 1975

Spring Revolution, 1978

Poster, 1980

In the 1980s, Awazu developed a strong interest in 

the environment and state of human civilization,

which was naturally reflected in his art. 

Millions, large sea turtle bronze sculpture at Oyashirazu Pier Park, 1989

Save the Sea, 1993