"In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as industrialization swelled and advances in science and health paralleled social and economic transformation, artists searched for ways to express the changing times. Fatigued with the traditions and values of conservative society, which increasingly felt at odds with the way the world was heading, artists began to seek new visual languages in painting, architecture, and design."
"Forthcoming from Penguin Random House, Modern Japanese Printmakers: New Waves and Eruptions celebrates the trailblazing artists who innovated unique techniques, merged traditional mediums with new methods, and reveled in experimentation. As Japan's consumer culture blossomed in the early 20th century, and society adopted technologies and pop culture influences from abroad, artists also embraced modernity. Takea Hideo, for example, reimagines ukiyo-e imagery into surreal, dreamlike tableaux. And Funsaka Yoshiuke creates playful chromatic experiments using repeated motifs like lemons, black dots, grids, and multi-hued strips of color."
Industrialization and scientific advances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries drove artists to abandon conservative traditions and pursue new visual languages across painting, architecture, and design. Early non-academic experiments by figures like van Gogh and the Impressionists escalated into modernist movements after World War I, with Malevich’s Black Square marking a shift toward pure abstraction. After World War II modernism spread globally. In Japan, early-to-mid-20th-century creators combined indigenous traditions such as ukiyo-e with Western influences, pioneering inventive printmaking techniques across woodblock, lithography, silkscreen, and monoprint while exploring surreal, chromatic, and repetitive motifs.
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