Early Works
11 works
Yoshitomo Nara Slash With A Knife For Sale
Yoshitomo Nara
Slash With A Knife, 1999
About this work
Yoshitomo Nara's *Slash With A Knife* from 1999 exemplifies the Japanese artist's most provocative and sought-after period, when his visual language reached full maturity. The work features one of Nara's characteristic wide-eyed children, rendered with deceptive simplicity yet charged with unmistakable menace. Clutching a blade, the figure embodies the tension between innocence and aggression that has become synonymous with Nara's practice—a duality that continues to resonate deeply with collectors worldwide. Emerging from the artist's formative years in Düsseldorf and shaped by his immersion in punk rock and underground music culture, works from this era carry a raw emotional intensity. The flat, cartoon-like aesthetic belies a profound psychological complexity; these are not mere illustrations but confrontations with childhood's darker undercurrents. Nara's children refuse victimhood, instead projecting defiance and autonomy through their oversized eyes and weaponized accessories. Pieces from the late 1990s occupy a particularly significant position within the market, representing the moment when Nara's artistic identity crystallized into the visual vocabulary now recognized across contemporary art circles. *Slash With A Knife* stands as a prime example of the rebellious spirit and emotional authenticity that have driven sustained international demand for the artist's work. For acquisition inquiries regarding this important work by Yoshitomo Nara, please contact Guy Hepner.
Price on Application
Auction History
Slash with a Knife (In the Floating World) · Yoshitomo Nara · Christie's · 2020-07 · $16,126
Slash with a Knife, from In the Floating World · Yoshitomo Nara · Christie's · 2021-03 · $10,000
Slash with a Knife from the series In the Floating World · Yoshitomo Nara · Phillips · 2022-04 · $7,313
Slash with a Knife (In the Floating World) · Yoshitomo Nara · China Guardian · 2022-10 · $5,417
More from this series
Related Reading
More series by Yoshitomo Nara
About the Woodblock Prints Series
Overview
Yoshitomo Nara's woodblock prints bring his instantly recognisable cast of wide-eyed children into dialogue with one of Japan's oldest artistic traditions. Where the paintings and drawings channel punk energy and raw emotion, the woodblocks filter that same sensibility through the disciplined language of ukiyo-e — the "pictures of the floating world" that defined Japanese printmaking for centuries. The result is a body of work that feels at once ancient and defiantly contemporary. Guy Hepner offers woodblock prints from across Nara's career at our New York gallery.
Technique & Tradition
Traditional Japanese woodblock printing is a painstaking relief process: a design is transferred to a block, usually of cherry wood, and a carver chisels away everything that will not print, leaving the image raised in relief. Ink is applied to that raised surface and the sheet is pressed by hand, one colour and one block at a time. Nara embraces this labour-intensive craft, allowing the grain of the wood and the slight irregularities of hand-pressing to become part of the image rather than something to be hidden.
That embrace of tradition is also a form of subversion. In his celebrated In the Floating World project (1998–1999), Nara took famous historical ukiyo-e compositions — the courtesans and kabuki actors of masters such as Utamaro — and reworked them, inserting his own scowling, solitary figures into the genre's revered templates. It is an act of affectionate vandalism: honouring the tradition while running wild through it.
, and on to recent works such as Knife, Sprout In The Hand Mirror and This Machine Kills Fascists*. Across these pieces the recurring motifs are unmistakable — the confrontational stare, the small figure alone against an empty ground, the flashes of text and object that hint at music, protest and childhood defiance.
Issued in limited editions, these prints are among Nara's most collectible multiples, prized for the way they translate the emotional charge of his painting into the deliberate, tactile medium of the carved block.
Collecting Nara Woodblock Prints
Nara's woodblocks appeal to collectors drawn to the meeting point of contemporary art and traditional craft, and they sit naturally alongside his lithographs, editions and works on paper. Guy Hepner Gallery presents authenticated woodblock prints with full provenance documentation. Contact our New York team to discuss current availability and acquisition.
About Yoshitomo Nara
Yoshitomo Nara
Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959, Hirosaki, Japan) stands as one of the most influential figures in contemporary Japanese art, whose deceptively simple portraits of wide-eyed children—at once innocent and subversively defiant—have become icons of the Neo-Pop movement. Trained in Düsseldorf and deeply influenced by punk rock and anime culture, Nara creates works that resonate across cultural boundaries, commanding an international collector base and record-breaking auction results. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are held in major museum collections worldwide, cementing his position as a defining voice in 21st-century art.