More than 200 works by Japanese
ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai and his students will go on
display at Rome's Ara Pacis beginning October 12, including his
famed woodblock print "The Great Wave", in a show curated by
Japanese art expert Rossella Menegazzo.
The exhibition will include Hokusai's entire collected works,
including drawings and paintings, displayed in a two-phase
rotation through January 14, 2018.
The show is sponsored by Rome's Superintendency for Cultural
Heritage with the support of the Japanese Embassy and organized
by MondoMostre, Skira, and Zetema.
"Hokusai worked between the 18th and 19th centuries with an
exceptional inventive capacity," said Rome Cultural Heritage
Superintendent Claudio Parisi Presicce, emphasizing how
Hokusai's work had an influence on 19th-century European
Impressionism.
One artist said to have influenced the Impressionists and
Vincent Van Gogh is Hokusai student Keisai Eisen, whose work
will be go display in Italy for the first time in this show.
The exhibition places a particular focus on education,
demonstrating how Hokusai shared his wealth of techniques and
ideas with his students and how some, such as Eisen, went on to
develop their own entirely personal styles, composition
techniques, and themes based on Hokusai's teachings.
Ukiyo-e, which in Japanese translates to "picture of the
floating world", is shown through curator Menegazzo's choice of
many works that have never gone on display before in Italy, to
give a more complete picture of the artist and his legacy.
Painting series such as the famous "Thirty-Six Views of Mount
Fuji" and "One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji", which were inspired
by the Shinto religion, are included in the show.
"Hokusai was also a fervent Buddhist of the Nichiren school,
as shown by the painted scrolls with images of dragons, lions,
and divinities," Menegazzo said.
Volumes of sketchbooks known as manga, which gather hundreds
of sketches and drawings Hokusai made in simple black ink with
light touches of vermilion, will be on display as well.
Two different versions of "The Great Wave" will be used for
the exhibition, switching out one for the other at the show's
midway point for conservation.
One will be on loan from Genoa's Edoardo Chiossone Museum of
Oriental Art and the other from the collection of Kawasaki Isago
no Sato Museum in Japan.
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