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One of the most recognizable pieces of Japanese art: Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. The 18th-century woodblock print famously shows three boats being tossed around in a storm. It’s one of more than 200 works by the painter and engraver on show in Rome.
The exhibition is the most comprehensive dedicated to the undisputed master of Japanese art ever to be staged in Italy. It marks the 160th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and Japan and traces the artist’s entire creative career, from works rooted in tradition to his most revolutionary pieces.
Francesca Villanti, an art historian and scientific advisor to the exhibition, says it is a “rich, comprehensive collection, assembled by a great admirer of Hokusai, and thus selected with rigor, care, and a genuine love and passion for this Japanese artist’s prints.”
Hokusai was the undisputed master of Ukiyo-e. It’s a distinctive Japanese art style whose name means ‘pictures of the floating world,’ referring to the vibrant and dynamic socio-economic and cultural milieu that emerged in the early 17th century.
Through his woodblock prints, Hokusai celebrated the beauty of the ephemeral, capturing the everyday life and landscapes of the Edo period with a dynamic realism that, at the time, seemed revolutionary.
“What strikes us is his deep understanding of nature–partly because it is such an integral part of Japanese culture–and his grasp of its sheer scale and grandeur,” says Villanti.
The works come from the prestigious collection of the National Museum in Kraków. For the first time, the museum has loaned its works to Italy for the first major monographic exhibition on Hokusai outside Poland.
The Polish museum holds such a large collection of Japanese works thanks to Feliks Jasieński, a 19th-century Polish exile and collector who developed a deep passion for Japanese art while in Paris. He donated some 20,000 items to the museum in 1920.
“I believe that we present quite a good range of different (aspects) of his art creations. For example, watching people, traveling people, different ways of showing a person and object from different perspectives,” says Beata Romanowicz, curator of the exhibition.
This article was provided by The Associated Press.