Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

Ancient and modern: the art often live east of this paradox and it is the personification of Katsushika Hokusai. Japanese artist, master engraving, perhaps best known to the world, was able to express spirituality and tradition and innovation with intensity and with an eye on the future of rare intuition.

There is talk of 30000 prints made during the life of the greatest interpreter of the season the highest engraving Japanese, whose most famous work is The Great Wave.

Born in Edo in 1760 was a painter and "freak design" (according to his definition). The beginning of Hokusai Ukiyo are part of the artistic climate, which was able to renew. Master of Ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") hears the word and the natural world that until then had remained silent. Dominant obsession of his prints is Mount Fuji in the valley, which moves in his prints, subtle and fast men who labor in the work.

Its print landscape (created through the technique of polychrome on wood) and the famous series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, won a great success (note the novelty of the use of Prussian blue, pigment new recently arrived from 'Holland liked the freshness and liveliness) and when he finally dell'1800 Hokusai's art world came in European art, feeds the cult of Japan, which already rife amongst the cultural and artistic elite. Notable among others is the style of Hokusai's influence on the Impressionists.

Hokusai reinterprets the tradition, than geishas and sumo wrestlers. Buddhist, Shinto, reformer, invented the Hokusai print landscape and the mountains, bridges, waterfalls, the sea becomes the backdrop for a narrative protagonists played on the meditation on the suggestion, especially on the majestic harmony of nature above the pettiness of everyday 'man.

He died in 1849 and the haiku on his deathbed says: "Although as a ghost, I'll go for pleasure, for the summer meadows"