Hasui Kawase Exhibition

Paramita Museum

Finished

Artists

Hasui Kawase

Hasui Kawase (1883-1957) was a woodblock print artist active from the Taisho to Showa periods. He traveled throughout Japan and painted seasonal landscapes where the lives of ordinary people still lived. The publisher Shozaburo Watanabe influenced Kawase, promoting "shin-hanga" (new prints) as the print art of a new era while maintaining the techniques of ukiyo-e. Kawase worked with Watanabe and other highly skilled engravers and printers to produce woodblock prints as "works of art" in Japan.

In 1923, just as Kawase's creative activities were progressing smoothly, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, destroying most of Watanabe's work and woodblocks and Kawase's sketchbooks. Watanabe quickly set about rebuilding his store and sent an exhausted Kawase on a trip. His brushwork began to change around this time, and he began to produce more realistic and vividly colored works compared to his pre-disaster work.

This exhibition divides the life of Hasui Kawase into three chapters: "From the time he began making prints until the Great Kanto Earthquake,” "Style change after the earthquake," and "From before and after the Pacific War to his later years," and introduces representative works.

Schedule

Feb 3 (Fri) 2023-Mar 28 (Tue) 2023