The Departmental Museum of Asian Arts presents in Nice until January 29, 2023 an exceptional exhibition of one hundred and twenty-six prints by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) from the collection of Georges Leskowicz.
Illustrious Japanese painter and engraver, Katsushika Hokusai has signed his works with more than sixty names throughout his career. One of his pseudonyms was "Gwakyojin" (the drawing-crazed old man). His prints were among the first to be imported into Europe from the Far East. Among the many European painters who appreciated Hokusai, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, among others. Toulouse-Lautrec imprints on him his ways of drawing with a reed, of schematizing the forms, sometimes adding a touch of humor
Very early in his career, as from the 1780's, Hokusai incorporated Western perspective into his depictions of cityscapes, famous sites, architecture, and historical scenes.
Published from 1814 to 1848, La Manga (abundant drawings) is one of his most famous collections, which brings together more than 3900 drawings, which mix landscapes with fable and the history of the little people, warriors, monsters, ghosts.
As early as 1818, Hokusai produced seven series of prints on the Tōkaidō route ("East Sea Route") which connects Edo (now Tōkyō), the shogunal capital since 1603, and Kyoto, the imperial capital. This set, the only one in a vertical medium format, depicts the habits and customs of travelers in a decor relegated to second place.
In 1820, as a new sixty-year astrological cycle began, Hokusai took the name Iitsu, literally "one year old again". From 1830, in the space of four years, he produced three short series which are among his most famous, taking as subjects landscapes, famous sites but also classical literature.
The year 1831 saw the publication of the thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, prints in which Hokusai often used Prussian blue and where he combined Western, Chinese and Japanese composition techniques.
In 1835-1836, under the name of Manji (“Aged ten thousand years”), Hokusai undertook to translate into images one hundred waka poems collected in an anthology at the beginning of the 13th century, very popular and known through recitation games.
The exhibition is produced in partnership with the Jerzy Leskowicz Foundation, the Jules Chéret Museum of Fine Arts (Nice), the Saint-Remi Museum (Reims), the Asian Arts Museum of Toulon, the Jean-Christophe Charbonnier Gallery (Paris ).
It puts into perspective 144 works by Hokusai, about whom Whistler wrote in a lecture translated by Mallarmé:
"...satisfied that the story of the beautiful is complete, already, carved in the marbles of the Parthenon and chiselled with birds on Hokusai's fan at the foot of Fuji-Yama".
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