Title: Shin hanga – The new prints of Japan (1900-1960)
Duration: 13 October 2022 to 15 January 2023
Location: The Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH), Brussels, Belgium
The Shin hanga exhibition features no less than 220 Japanese prints from two private collections in the Netherlands, as well as sketches, studies and prints from the collection of the grandson of the publisher Watanabe. Next to these works, the visitors will find a selection of Shin hanga prints from the collection of the Art & History Museum.
The Shin hanga (literally «new prints») art movement was a revival of traditional printmaking (ukiyo‑e) in the early 20th century. The publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962), noting the decline in xylographic production due to competition from new imported techniques such as photography and lithography, was the movement’s greatest promoter. He gathered around him artists whose drawings were printed using traditional woodblock printing techniques.
While retaining classic themes such as landscapes, beautiful women (bijin), kabuki actors and flowers-and-birds, Shin hanga prints also reflect a modernizing Japan and seduce with a new aesthetic and an extremely high production quality. Artists: Kawase Hasui, Itō Shinsui, Ohara Koson, Kasamatsu Shirō, Komura Settai, …
This exhibition is a logical follow-up to the major Ukiyo-e exhibition held at the Museum in 2016‑2017. It takes up the history of traditional printmaking in Japan where the 2016 exhibition ended. For the exhibition, the museum cooperates with guest curator Chris Uhlenbeck.
For more information, please visit the website here.
Image: Morning Hair, Torii Kotondo, 1931.
