Seven Masters: 20th-Century Japanese Woodblock Prints

Explore the intersection of traditional Japanese style and western technique in the first major traveling exhibition of Japanese art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. The artists featured in “Seven Masters” developed a new art form—shin hanga—in response to Japan’s rapid Westernization and industrialization. Shin hanga mingled the old with the new, creating beautiful, enticing pictures that were widely reproduced as prints of almost unsurpassed quality. The works on view exemplify this new movement.

Organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art and toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC.

Curated by Andreas Marks, head of the Japanese and Korean Art Department at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Images (left to right):
Torii Kotondo (1900–1976) – Ame (Rain)

Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) – Ueno Kiyomizudo no Yuki (Snow at Ueno Kiyomizudo)

Natori Shunsen (1886–1960) – The Actor Ichikawa Sadanji II as Narukami Shōnin, from the series “Creative Prints of Collected Portraits by Shunsen”