Hokusai: 1760 - 1849 (Basic Art)

Hokusai (1760–1849), Discover the artist whose majestic wave created shockwaves around the world. Hokusai (1760-1849) is not only a giant of Japanese art and a legendary figure of the Edo period, he is also a founding father of Western modernism, whose prolific production of illustrations, paintings, and prints, among other mediums, comprises one of the most comprehensive bodies of ukiyo-e art and a benchmark in terms of Japonism. His influence extended to Impressionism, Art Nouveau and beyond. He fascinated great artists such as Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt and Vincent van Gogh.

Hokusai was always a man on the move. He moved more than 90 times during his life and even changed his name, adopting at least thirty pseudonyms for his work. In his art, he adopted the same feverishness, and covered the entire spectrum of Japanese ukiyo-e, these "pictures of the floating world". He produced landscape prints and kabuki actor prints, as well as erotic books, print albums and illustrations for poetry anthologies or historical novels, as well as surimono, privately printed engravings for special occasions.

Hokusai's series of prints entitled Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, published between 1830 and 1834, is his most famous work, marking the pinnacle of Japanese landscape printmaking with its successive depictions of the illustrious mountain in different seasons and from multiple viewpoints. The series Under the Wave Off Kanagawa, also known as The Great Wave, is one of the most famous images of Japanese art in the world.

This introduction published by TASCHEN covers Hokusai's career in its entire duration and breadth, through key works from his rich portfolio. Through the meticulous and majestic images and series, the variety of subjects addressed by Hokusai, from erotic books to historical novels, the evolution of his exuberant formalism, and his innovative way of delimiting space through colors and lines, which would free Western art from the constraints of central perspective and launch modernism, are revealed.