Whispers of Rain, Silence of Snow. Kawase Hasui

Exhibition dedicated to the artist's daughter Fumiko Hasui. Collection of Galerie Nouvelle

We invite you to the first exceptional exhibition in Poland of the work of Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), transporting viewers directly to Japan at the turn of the Taishō and Shōwa eras. The 103 works on display come from the renowned collection of Galerie Nouvelle in Kashiwa, Japan. They form one of the most cohesive and captivating collections of twentieth-century Japanese modernist woodblock prints, the shin-hanga movement. This current, which breathed new life into the fading traditional art of ukiyo-e, revolutionized Japanese printmaking. Kawase Hasui combined centuries-old craftsmanship with Western realism, an exceptional sensitivity to light and shadow, and a nostalgic gaze on the dynamically transforming landscape of his homeland.

Called the poet of nostalgia and nature, he was an artist in constant journey. He travelled the country with a sketchbook in hand, capturing places that were disappearing forever under the pressure of rapid modernization and industrialization. His output is an intimate record of deep longing for a harmonious Japan of the past.

The exhibition, prepared in cooperation with Galerie Nouvelle, will allow visitors to admire the very essence of his style. It includes landscapes bathed in streaks of rain, snow-covered rural temples, majestic castles in moonlight, and seaside villages drowning in the evening dusk. Hasui, like no one else, could capture the melancholy of a fleeting moment. A characteristic feature of his works is the almost complete renunciation of dynamic human scenes in favour of pervasive, monumental nature. When a person appears in his woodblock prints, they usually take the form of a lone wanderer hidden under a traditional umbrella, fully merged with the world around them.

The axis of the exhibition is a journey through a quiet, mysterious Japan full of inner calm, a world that, although it has long since passed, remains forever alive thanks to the blocks of Kawase Hasui. The craft and process of creating shin-hanga woodblock prints relied on an extremely close, almost organic collaboration between the artist, the block carver, the printer and the publisher, who in Hasui's case was the legendary Shōzaburō Watanabe.