Roosters over Fuji. Modern Japanese graphics

Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents the exhibition “Roosters over Mount Fuji”, opening a portal to the world of contemporary Japanese graphics

• More than forty works by famous Japanese artists
• Traditions of Eastern contemplative culture combined with Western printing technologies
• A touch of the mysterious culture of Japan

Modern Japan is a country of traditions and innovations, a distinctive part of the Western world, located “east of the east.”

Japan, as a country of original and high culture, opened up to the world thanks to ukiyo-e printed graphics (traditional longitudinal woodcuts) back in the 19th century. The classics of ukiyo-e, Hiroshige (1797–1858) and Hokusai (1760–1849), lived long lives and contributed their rich experience to art. The sacred Mount Fuji, one of the most revered shrines and a source of national pride, is often featured in their works.

To this day, printmaking as a field of fine art continues to be of great importance in Japan, and Fuji remains a source of endless inspiration for artists.

The exhibition at Erarta presents the works of twelve Japanese graphic artists, who were created over the past forty years and cover a wide range of trends and genres: symbolism, meditative abstraction, illustrations for monuments of Japanese literature, surrealism, everyday sketches, hyperrealism. Most of the authors are famous masters who have either already passed the age of 70 or are approaching it. However, the group also includes several younger graphic artists.

“Printosaurs,” as some authors ironically call themselves, are representatives of the post-war generation of Japanese artists. Now there are not many who preserve and develop the labor-intensive traditional art of printed graphics without resorting to the help of a computer, but they continue in art a fruitful dialogue between the fleeting and the eternal, East and West, tradition and modernity.

The works selected for the exhibition represent a wide range of techniques: woodcut (Seiko Kawachi), mezzotint (Katsunori Hamanishi, Hiroaki Miyayama, Masataka Kuroyanagi), lithography (Harumi Sonoyama, Akito Tanimura, Mihoko Sekiguchi), silkscreen (Michiko Hisida), shin -colle (Yuji Hiratsuka), as well as combined techniques (Takeshi Saito, Sanae Yamamoto, Norimasa Mizutani).

For the first time, the St. Petersburg audience is presented with a survey exhibition of masters of modern Japanese printed graphics. The works of these artists were demonstrated in many countries of Asia, Europe and America and were repeatedly awarded with international prizes.

The exhibition is organized in collaboration with independent curator Andrey Martynov.