Naoko Matsubara (b. 1937) creates bold, expressive woodblock prints depicting everything from nature and motherhood to music, dance, and theater. Born on the island of Shikoku in Japan’s Inland Sea, Matsubara grew up in Kyoto and studied at the Kyoto Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1960. There, she began applying her tools directly to woodblocks without preliminary sketches, developing a direct, forthright, and utterly singular style.

This exhibition celebrates the artist’s storied career, now in its seventh decade, by focusing on specific locations that have been transformative for her practice. Kyoto is the city of her childhood. She spent formative early years as an artist in Boston and its surrounds. In Toronto she put down personal and professional roots, and Tibet has been a cipher for her omnivorous love of new horizons. Through works created in and influenced by these sites, visitors can explore the career of an artist who connects craft, communities, and an ever-observant eye on the world.

Just as Matsubara is significant to the MFA—nearly 40 of her prints belong to the collection—the Museum holds a special place in her heart: her meet-cute with her late husband happened in the MFA galleries in the 1960s, while both lived nearby in Cambridge. He, a scholar of 18th-century Japanese ukiyo-e prints, came to give a lecture; she, unmoved by the subject of his talk, came for the sushi and sake. The rest, as they say, is history.