Pisa, Palazzo Blu dedicates major exhibition to Hokusai, with more than 200 works

In Pisa, for the first time, Palazzo Blu is hosting a major exhibition dedicated to the Japanese master Hokusai (Katsushika Hokusai; Edo, 1760 - 1849), from Oct. 24, 2024 until Feb. 23, 2025, produced and organized by Fondazione Palazzo Blu and MondoMostre, with the contribution of Fondazione Pisa, curated by Rossella Menegazzo, professor and expert in East Asian Art History at the University of Milan.

Through more than 200 works from the Edoardo Chiossone Museum of Oriental Art in Genoa and the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice, as well as from Italian and Japanese private collections, the exhibition highlights the eclecticism of the greatest master of the ukiyoe artistic strand, literally translated “images of the Floating World,” which marked the apex of the development ofEdo-era art (1603 - 1868) in Japan, and the richness of his legacy evident in the works of the many pupils who continued his style, but also in the unquestionable influence he exerted on late 19th-century European art and continues to have on so many contemporary artists who are inspired by him.

The exhibition project aims to enhance the two largest Italian collections of Japanese art by highlighting their artistic quality and historical, social and cultural value. A heritage that we owe to Edoardo Chiossone and Enrico di Borbone Conte di Bardi, whose profound knowledge of Japan and passionate work in collecting materials gave rise to highly valuable collections that have come down to us today.

Beginning with production made for the large market in single sheets in print, with a wooden matrix and in polychrome, in different series and editions, the exhibition highlights the variety of formats and contents with a section devoted to illustrated volumes, manga and manuals designed to teach drawing or to be read and observed for pleasure, up to representing the printed production reserved for a more educated and refined clientele (surimono) made up of greeting cards, invitations, advertisements for events, restaurants, literary meetings, products, and the hand-painted work by the master and his students on vertical scrolls that exemplifies the utmost freedom of artistic expression.

Thus, alongside the master’s works are also presented the silograph and pictorial works of his closest pupils, including Hokkei, Gakutei, Hokuba, Ryūryūkyō, as well as his daughter Oi who accompanied Hokusai until the end of his career, working at his side and collecting his artistic legacy according to her own style.

The exhibition is divided into six sections: 1. Famous views of Japan, 2. Views of Mt. Fuji, 3. Manga and manuals, 4. Representation of poets and poems, 5. Surimono: tickets and invitations, 6. Freedom to paint, 7. Hokusai and Japanism, 8. Hokusai pop. The exhibition begins with Hokusai’s most famous and prolific production, prints of views of famous places(meisho) destined for the broad market: temples and architecture, bridges and waterfalls, as well as picture books (ehon) documenting Japan’s earliest internal routes such as the Tōkaidō and the iconic sites of the shogunale administrative capital of Edo. This production culminates in the series of the famous Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1830-32) to which the second section is devoted, to which are flanked by the three volumes devoted to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (1834-35, c. 1840) and a never-before-exhibited Meiji-era album that takes up the work on Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views.

The next section presents the production of illustrated volumes, particularly the 15-volume Manga series intended as drawing manuals for professional and amateur painters, along with other illustrated books and manuals that condense all the characters and elements later found accomplished in Hokusai’s polychrome prints. Nineteenth-century European painters drew heavily from these works to recreate poses and subjects for their paintings. On display among the large-format albums is the famous Plovers on the Waves(Nami chidori), one of Hokusai’s finest albums of the erotic genre known as shunga, "spring pictures , " which circulated secretly while avoiding censorship with sober covers to offer images, however, within love encounters of all kinds, and which interested all the artists who made ends meet thanks to this production.

From here, the exhibition continues with a selection of works designed for a more educated audience, thus less marketable than landscapes and female beauties, as it is linked to literary and poetic themes and characters. In particular, examples from two series are presented: Mirror of Japanese and Chinese Poets dedicated to the hundred great classical poets, and One Hundred Poems for One Hundred Poets in Illustrated Tales of the Nanny, which shows a new coloristic choice inspired by the verses of the poetic collection, which was the last series designed by Hokusai before he devoted himself primarily to painting.

The heart of the exhibition is a large section devoted to an exclusive artistic production little known to the public: surimono, cards and invitations of the highest technical refinement, designed for a cultured and elite clientele. This section includes rare works preserved in hundreds at the Chiossone Museum, never before exhibited compactly. This extensive series of surimono plays a central role in the exhibition, as it allows a comparison of Hokusai’s style with that of his pupils, highlighting the originality of themes, techniques and formats. Surimono are greeting, invitation and advertising cards created for events, restaurants and literary meetings, intended for a restricted clientele and therefore produced in limited editions, making them rare in collections. Characterized by highly elegant illustrations enhanced by silver and gold pigments, or dry-etched printing, color variations, they include calligraphed texts and poems that make their purpose explicit.

Finally, the historical tour closes with a selection of hand-painted scrolls that represent the pinnacle of Hokusai’s skill and eccentricity in the stroke, as well as his deeper spirit. His religious and scaramantic thinking clearly emerges in these works, featuring legendary animals and lucky charms such as roosters, dragons and tigers, as well as images of the sacred Mount Fuji, to which he was devoted. We also find portraits of poets, gods and beautiful women, symbols of beauty and elegance, all themes that his pupils and daughter later developed.

To complete the view of what Hokusai’s work has meant over time, the exhibition offers a selection of works by the best-known contemporary Japanese pop artists such as Yoshitomo Nara (1959-), famous for figures of little girls with frightening and angry faces, who dedicated drawings and ironic quotations to Hokusai while incorporating social and environmental messages; the TeamLab group, founded in 2011 and renowned for its immersive digital art museum in Tokyo, which creates interactive installations and videos that draw inspiration from nature, landscapes and seasons typical of classical art; draftsman Manabu Ikeda, who works at the tip of his pen making drawings crowded with minute details, including the work Foretoken in which he captured Hokusai’s “Great Wave” in an apocalyptic image, and a tribute by Italian artist Simone Legno, who again dedicated a pictorial work specifically for the exhibition to the Great Wave.

An exploration of what could be called “new Japanism” through installations that use the new languages of technology, animation, and graphics to appreciate even more the absolute contemporaneity of Hokusai’s work.

Pisa, Palazzo Blu dedicates major exhibition to Hokusai, with more than 200 works

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