Exhibition "Visual Art of the Edo Era"

Exhibition at the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin will be held in two stages: visitors will be able to see the first part of the work from September 4 to September 30, and the second from October 3 to 28.

The exhibition "Visual Art of the Edo Era" in 2018 will be the main event of the cross year of Russia and Japan. The exhibition will feature more than 120 works by artists from various traditional art schools. For the first time, the Russian public will see the whole palette of artistic movements of Japanese art of the 17th – 19th centuries, including works by artists from the schools of Kano, Tosa, Rimp, Nang, Maruyama-Shijou, ukiyo-e. Two works have the status of a “national treasure”, ten have the status of a “particularly valuable cultural object” and five have the status of a “particularly valuable object of art”. Some of these works rarely leave Japan. In addition to the monuments from Japanese collections, the exposition will be supplemented by works from Russian museums: painting from the Pushkin Museum to them. A.S. Pushkin, as well as painting and engraving from the Museum of the East.

The culture of the Edo era (1603–1868) was not chosen as the theme of the exhibition. After a long period of internecine wars, power in Japan passed into the hands of the Tokugawa clan, which ruled the country for nearly 250 years. Wars stopped, various traditional crafts actively developed. The actual center of the country was the city of Edo, where the military ruler of the country, the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, transferred the capital. In less than 50 years, Edo has transformed from a small village into a city with half a million inhabitants. The Edo era was marked by the rapid construction of cities. Around the castles, at the intersections of trade routes, near sea bays with bays, cities arose, an urban estate of artisans and merchants was formed, along with the military, which was the legislator of the artistic tastes of the era.

The Edo era has become the most diverse era in the representativeness of various artistic movements in the history of Japanese art.

Curator: Ainura Yusupova, Leading Researcher, Graphic Department.