Utagawa Kuniyoshi. The World of Legends and Fantasies

Fleeting Beauty

The 150th anniversary of Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s death is an opportunity to see his works from the collection of Far Eastern art donated to the National Museum in Krakow in 1920 by the outstanding collector Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński.

Japanese woodcut blossomed during the Edo period between the 17th and 19th centuries. This coincided with the evolution of the ukiyo-e trend in painting. The name means “pictures of the floating world”, or the lives of the affluent middle classes who gained wealth as a result of the stabilisation and peace in the Land of the Cherry Blossom and developed its own popular culture, distinct from the elitist art of the privileged ruling classes. One of its typical examples was cheap, easily reproduced woodcut.
Woodcut artists studied at schools whose names they incorporated as part of their own surnames – Torii, Katsugawa, Utagawa. A member of the latter, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) was one of the most important personalities of the late ukiyo-e period, which enjoyed the peak of its popularity in the first half of the 19th century Just like other representatives of the trend, he immortalised the likenesses of actors of kabuki theatre and beautiful women. He also drew on themes from Japanese history, legends and myths; the protagonists of his expressive works are frequently spectres, ghosts and demons. He was also one of the first Japanese artists who attempted to combine his own home experiences with elements of European artistic workshops.

The fleeting beauty of the Edo period has been preserved in Kraków in one of the greatest collections of Japanese prints in Central Europe. The anniversary exhibition provides us with a few months to admire those prints, usually carefully protected from light. (Dorota Dziunikowska. “Karnet” monthly)

21 October 2011 – 29 January 2012 to 19 February 2012