# Mavo

> Tokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925). Covers carry a huge hand-drawn title; inside, machine-set type collides with hand-drawn kanji, kana and Latin letters, some sideways or upside down, inside heavy black or red rules that box the page. Original linocuts of abstract machine forms sit on real newspaper sheets bound in as pages, some turned 90 degrees so horizontal newsprint crosses vertical text. One cover carried a firecracker.

- Period: 1923–1925
- Where: East Asia
- Origin: Tokyo: the group's debut was announced in the newspaper Jiji shinpō in July 1923, two months after the Futurist Art Association (Miraiha Bijutsu Kyōkai) disbanded (first exhibition at the Buddhist temple Denpōin, Asakusa, 28 July to 3 August 1923; the magazine was published from Murayama Tomoyoshi's house, and from mid-1925 with the backing of the small publisher Chōryūsha)
- Branch: Avant-garde
- Also known as: MAVO, MaVo, Conscious Constructivism (ishikiteki kōseishugi)
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/mavo/

## How it works

- Build the page from real things: bind original linocuts, photographs of your own assemblages and actual newspaper sheets with their ads into the publication, so a hand-cut print sits on mass-produced newsprint.
- Make the writing directions fight: run vertical Japanese text against horizontal Latin letters or a newspaper sheet turned 90 degrees, and set some characters sideways, backward or upside down.
- Mix hand and machine inside the lettering: set standardized type beside irregular hand-drawn or hand-cut kanji, kana and Latin, jump sizes between neighbouring characters, let symbols and shapes stand in for characters when the poem needs them, and draw the title by hand in huge blocky letters built from bars and half-rounds, across the top or down the side of the cover, with a giant issue numeral boxed beside it.
- Hold the chaos in compartments: divide covers and pages with heavy black (or red) lattices, bands and rules, and frame text blocks with line, dot and arrow borders.
- Cut non-representational machine imagery in linoleum: tubes, girders, chains, saw blades and jutting diagonals in solid black and white, not scenery or portraits.
- Recycle and provoke: reuse your own prints, photographs and fliers from one project in the next, and make the publication an object that attacks the reader, down to hair, price tags or a firecracker on the cover.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Collage & layering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/collage-and-layering/) (defining)
- [Framed panels](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/framed-panels/) (characteristic)
- [Dynamic asymmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/dynamic-asymmetry/) (characteristic)
- [Diagonal axis](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/diagonal-axis/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Visual tension](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/visual-tension/) (defining)
- [Horror vacui](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/horror-vacui/) (characteristic)
- [Extreme scale contrast](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/extreme-scale-contrast/) (characteristic)

### Typography
- [Rotated & vertical setting](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rotated-and-vertical-setting/) (defining)
- [Eclectic mixing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/eclectic-mixing/) (defining)
- [Hand-lettering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-lettering/) (characteristic)
- [Experimental & distorted](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/experimental-and-distorted/) (characteristic)
- [Type as image](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/type-as-image/) (characteristic)

### Colour
- [Limited spot colours](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/limited-spot-colours/) (defining)
- [Monochrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/monochrome/) (characteristic)
- [Light ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/light-ground/) (characteristic)
- [Flat fields](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-fields/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Non-representational](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/non-representational/) (defining)
- [Rectilinear](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rectilinear/) (characteristic)
- [Angular & zigzag](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/angular-and-zigzag/) (characteristic)
- [Biomorphic curves](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/biomorphic-curves/) (occasional)
- [Distortion & exaggeration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/distortion-and-exaggeration/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Carved line](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/carved-line/) (defining)
- [Paper & letterpress bite](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/paper-and-letterpress-bite/) (characteristic)
- [Halftone & Ben-Day dots](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/halftone-and-ben-day-dots/) (occasional)

### Ornament
- [Rules & bars](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rules-and-bars/) (defining)
- [Borders & frames](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/borders-and-frames/) (characteristic)
- [Emblems & badges](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/emblems-and-badges/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Found & vernacular imagery](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/found-and-vernacular-imagery/) (defining)
- [Photomontage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/photomontage/) (characteristic)
- [Line illustration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/line-illustration/) (characteristic)
- [Straight photography](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/straight-photography/) (occasional)
- [Typography only](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/typography-only/) (occasional)

### Medium & production
- [Woodblock & linocut](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/woodblock-and-linocut/) (defining)
- [Letterpress](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/letterpress/) (defining)
- [Pen, brush & ink](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pen-brush-and-ink/) (occasional)
- [Architecture & signage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/architecture-and-signage/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Rebellious & subversive](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rebellious-and-subversive/) (defining)
- [Agitational & persuasive](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/agitational-and-persuasive/) (characteristic)
- [Technological & futurist](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/technological-and-futurist/) (characteristic)
- [Playful & witty](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/playful-and-witty/) (characteristic)
- [Ironic & self-aware](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ironic-and-self-aware/) (characteristic)

Avoids: Generous white space, Ornament-free, Floral & vegetal, Naturalistic depiction, Pastel, Rational & objective, Calm & contemplative

Palette: #ebe3cd, #151412, #c42a21, #c9367f, #dbb13a, #4b6f96

Typefaces: Blocky hand-drawn masthead letters, Machine-set Japanese letterpress type, Hand-drawn kanji, kana, Latin letters, The hand-drawn 'maVo' / 'MAVO' cover title, letters built from bars and half-rounds, with a giant boxed issue numeral (MAVO nos. 1-6, 1924-25), Standardized machine-set Japanese letterpress type run in the conventional vertical format, and the regular type of the bound-in newspaper sheets, Hand-drawn, organically shaped kanji, both kana syllabaries and Latin letters, some backward, sideways or inverted, beside machine type (Murayama Tomoyoshi's covers and fliers), Irregular, blocky title characters tilted against one another (Okada Tatsuo's cover for Shikei senkoku, 1925), The Mavo mark: katakana マヴォ with the Latin letters MV in a jagged emblem (Mavo Manifesto, 1923)

Known for: MAVO magazine, seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925, edited by Murayama Tomoyoshi and Okada Tatsuo; from the revival in June 1925 Okada and the poet Hagiwara Kyōjirō were listed on the masthead with Murayama. A composite of its covers is in the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and no. 1 is in the National Museums of Art collection (Japan Search, NMoA, 『マヴォ』第１号); The hand-drawn cover title of MAVO nos. 1-6 (1924-25): a mixed-case 'maVo' in huge blocky letters across the top of nos. 1-4 and a blocky 'MAVO' across the top of nos. 5-6 with fragments down the left side, each beside a giant issue numeral; the group's envelopes repeated 'the same bold typography as on the cover of Mavo magazine' (Weisenfeld, Fig. 76; Monoskop scans); MAVO no. 3 (September 1924): a cover collage of human hair, product labels and price tags with a firecracker attached, which the censor banned; inside, Yabashi Kimimaro's text 'On the Day of the Final Proof of Issue No. 3' printed over half a newspaper sheet of financial listings turned 90 degrees, and Sumiya Iwane's linocut Construction of Movement and Machine (Undō to kikai no kōsei) pasted onto a newspaper sheet as a page; MAVO no. 1 (July 1924): a photograph of Yamazato Eikichi's assemblage Standing Man on the cover, and Kinoshita Shūichirō's linocut Record I of the Negative Destructive Act of Every Conceptual Indication inside (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo); MAVO no. 2 (August 1924): cover printed in black on deep red stock, the hand-drawn 'maVo' title upside down above vertical katakana マヴォ and a boxed numeral 2, with a tipped-in orange, teal and black linocut on the last plate (Monoskop scan); MAVO no. 4 (November 1924): a cover with an inset linocut by Toda Tatsuo, Prophesy (Yogen), printed in red and showing part of the circular saw blade from the cover of Theo van Doesburg's Mecano, under the hand-drawn 'maVo' title and a boxed numeral 4; a full-page red linocut follows inside (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; Monoskop scan); MAVO's covers and pages boxed into rectilinear sections by bold horizontal and vertical lines, in black and, on no. 6 (July 1925), in red, with red-printed pages inside, an orange band on the red-printed cover and a red gear on the back page; the cover of no. 5 (June 1925) is in the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers; Hagiwara Kyōjirō, Shikei senkoku (Death Sentence), Chōryūsha, October 1925, Mavo's only collaborative book design: Okada Tatsuo's cover of two black vertical lattices, a yellow band, a red title band of tilted blocky characters, a bluish circle and a black-and-white grid; inside, abstract linocuts by Okada and Yabashi Kimimaro, line, dot and arrow borders, and poems in which symbols replace characters (Okada's layout for 'Rasukorinikofu', pp. 130-31)

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Grew out of: [Dada](https://stylogeny.com/styles/dada.md) (1916–1924)
- Influenced by: [Italian Futurism](https://stylogeny.com/styles/futurism.md) (1909–1944)
- Influenced by: [Russian Constructivism](https://stylogeny.com/styles/constructivism.md) (1917–1934)
- Influenced by: [Expressionist Woodcut Graphics](https://stylogeny.com/styles/expressionist-graphics.md) (1905–1925)
- Influenced by: [De Stijl](https://stylogeny.com/styles/de-stijl.md) (1917–1931)
- Alike in its design choices: [Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics](https://stylogeny.com/styles/estridentismo-graphics.md) (1921–1927), 70% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography](https://stylogeny.com/styles/deconstructivist-typography.md) (1980–1998), 59% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Vorticism & BLAST Typography](https://stylogeny.com/styles/vorticism.md) (1914–1920), 57% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Punk & DIY Zine](https://stylogeny.com/styles/punk-diy.md) (1976–1986), 57% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Emigre & Early Digital Type](https://stylogeny.com/styles/emigre.md) (1984–1998), 54% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Russian Futurist Book](https://stylogeny.com/styles/russian-futurist-book.md) (1910–1920), 53% alike

## Sources

- Gennifer Weisenfeld, Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905–1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), open-access copy (CC BY-NC 4.0) in DukeSpace, https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14591, also at https://archive.org/details/mavojapanesearti00weis (same CC BY-NC 4.0 text), read in full text: Murayama's 'conscious constructivism' (ishikiteki kōseishugi) after his return from Berlin, drawing on 'anarchism, Marxism, futurism, expressionism, dadaism, and constructivism' and seeking 'a nonrepresentational image of modernity'; Murayama's 'expressionist-dadaist approach to architecture'; the flier for the first exhibition naming 'Futurism Expressionism Dadaism' only to cross the names out; debut announced in Jiji shinpō in July 1923, two months after the Futurist Art Association dissolved; first exhibition at Denpōin, Asakusa, late July 1923, with the 'Mavo Manifesto' and its MV/katakana emblem stamped in bright fuchsia; envelopes printed 'using the same bold typography as on the cover of Mavo magazine' (Fig. 76); the Hayashiya restaurant barrack decoration (early 1924) with Mavo's slanted sign; magazine published July 1924 to August 1925 from Murayama's house; the announcement flier in large and small characters, some sideways and some inverted; 'original linocuts and photographic reproductions of assemblage, painting, and graphic works', recycled into new collages; no. 3 (September 1924) with a firecracker on the cover, banned by the censor, and its cover collage of human hair, product labels and price tags (Plate 9); revival from June 1925 with Chōryūsha's support and Okada and Hagiwara on the masthead; covers that combined 'the printed broadside and a handmade print'; 'actual sheets of newspaper as constituent pages', including Yabashi's text over a newsprint sheet 'rotated 90 degrees so that its horizontal layout contrasted with the conventional vertical format', and Sumiya's linocut affixed to newspaper; 'standardized, mechanistic-looking typography was juxtaposed with more organic, free-flowing letters and characters'; layouts delineated 'boldly with black, and in the case of Mavo no. 6 red, horizontal and vertical lines, dividing the composition into rectilinear, boxed sections'; Murayama mixing Western letters, Japanese characters and both syllabaries, some 'backward, sideways, or completely inverted'; Toda Tatsuo's Prophesy on the cover of no. 4 (November 1924) quoting the saw blade of Van Doesburg's Mecano; Shikei senkoku (Chōryūsha, October 1925) as 'the group's only collaborative book design', with Okada's cover described band by band, abstract linocuts, 'line, dot, and arrow border patterns', and typography 'often incorporating symbols and shapes to substitute for characters'; Okada's linocuts for Toller's Swallow Book (Chōryūsha, April 1925); figure captions locating covers at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and the Zimmerli Art Museum; Mavo artists 'opposed pure aestheticism and expressionism'
- Monoskop, 'MAVO', https://monoskop.org/MAVO (formed in July 1923 from Murayama and former members of the Futurist Art Association: Yanase Masamu, Ogata Kamenosuke, Ōura Shūzō, Kadowaki Shinrō; later members including Okada Tatsuo, Yabashi Kimimaro, Toda Tatsuo, Sumiya Iwane, Kinoshita Shūichirō and Hagiwara Kyōjirō; dissolved at the end of 1925; issues 1–6 dated Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct 1924 and Jun, Jul 1925, edited by Okada and Murayama, seven issues in all; 'by the third issue, the magazine was thick with advertisements and the usage of actual newspaper as its pages'; first exhibition at Denpōin, Asakusa, 28 July to 3 August 1923; artists' books Shikei senkoku, Tsubame no sho and Aozameta dōteikyō, all Chōryūsha; Monoskop dates no. 4 to October 1924, Weisenfeld to November 1924)
- Monoskop, scans of MAVO nos. 1-6 (sourced from Tyrus Miller), https://monoskop.org/MAVO, every page viewed: covers with the hand-drawn 'maVo' (nos. 1-4) or fragmented 'MAVO' (nos. 5-6) title beside a giant issue numeral; no. 2 cover printed black on deep red stock with the title upside down, and a tipped-in orange, teal and black linocut; no. 3 bound largely of newspaper sheets; no. 4 cover linocut and a full-page interior linocut printed in red; no. 6 cover in red with an orange band, red-printed pages and rules inside, and a red gear on the back page
- Wikipedia, 'Mavo', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavo (founded 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, Ōura Shūzō, Yanase Masamu, Ogata Kamenosuke and Kadowaki Shinrō, and led by Murayama, who spent 1922 in Berlin; magazine edited by Okada and Murayama, seven issues between July 1924 and August 1925, with original linocut prints and photographic reproductions; 'Reuse and recycling from one project to another was one of the group's trademark strategies'; the third issue 'came with a firecracker adhered to its cover'; collages combining industrial products with painting or printmaking)
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library, Saitō Hideo, Aozameta dōteikyō: shigashū, Tokyo, 1926, illustrated by Tatsuo Okada, 120 pages, 23 cm, PL838.A58 A69 1926, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/820686 (record read through the Met's open-access collection API)
- Japan Search, NMoA Collection (National Museums of Art), 『マヴォ』第１号 (MAVO, vol. 1), edited and published by Murayama Tomoyoshi, https://jpsearch.go.jp/en/item/syozo-172629

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Mavo”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/mavo/