Gorgeous etching by Japanese artist Keiko Minami (1911-2004). This abstract work depicts two birds in the trees. Signed bottom right and marked 40/50 on bottom left. Framed with fun yellow mat. Keiko Minami was a Japanese artist, aquatint engraver, and poet born in the Imizu District of Toyama Prefecture. Orphaned at a young age she expressed an early interest in the arts. She painted and wrote poetry in high school and studied the art of children's stories under the Japanese novelist and poet Sakae Tsuboi. She attended the School of Fine Arts Tokyo, now called the Tokyo University of the Arts, from 1927 until 1929. Her artistic style was influenced by such artists as Paul Klee, Yozo Hamaguchi, Johnny Friedlaender, Yoshio Mori, and Japanese print artists. After the war, Minami moved to Tokyo to create children's books, and then to Paris in late 1953 where Minami began studying under Johnny Friedlaender. Soon after beginning her study of aquatint etching under Friedlaender Minami sold one of her early works to the city of Paris. In the late 1950s Minami's works were reproduced and sold as greeting cards by both the Museum of Modern Art and UNICEF; in 1959 she was named as an official artist of the United Nations.