A deluxe large-format edition of this beautifully illustrated introduction to Katsushika
Hokusai the most prolific artist of Japan's Edo period and master of ukiyo-e - 'images of the
floating world'. Hokusai: the blue foam-crested wave rearing above Mount Fuji the
celebrated volcano idealized and reinvented by the artist in every nuance of view season and
painting extraordinary bridges the waterfalls of Japan the contortions costumes gestures -
the very breath of men women peasants townsmen warriors artisans leaping horses birds
insects fish almost live on the ground on which they are painted - the countless imaginative
drawings or the lively sketches done on the spot for the Manga Hokusai's record of shapes and
forms drawn from life or imagined over time. With a body of work comprising more than 30 000
drawings and paintings Hokusai (1760-1849) was the most prolific varied and indisputably the
most creative artist of old Japan. A universal genius in everything that constituted drawing
and painting in his time he practised all genres of ukiyo-e those 'images of the floating
world' as his contemporaries liked to describe their pleasures and their daily life. This
book traces the career of this child from a working-class district of old Tokyo then known as
Edo evoking the special atmosphere of this great city and of Japanese life when Japan -
closed to foreigners - developed in a vacuum a powerfully original culture. Hokusai became one
of the great masters of the woodcut this 'brush gone wild' as he called himself being
rediscovered by the Impressionists and aesthetes at the end of the 19th century. He remains one
of the greatest and - thanks to his personality - one of the most attractive figures of world
art.
