Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints

Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints

In 1930 the Toledo Museum of Art organized a landmark exhibition of “modern Japanese prints.” Featuring the work of ten artists, including Hashiguchi Goyō, Kawase Hasui, and Hiroshi Yoshida, it has stood as a watershed in the success of the shin hanga (“new prints”) movement that revived traditional Japanese woodblock prints for a new era. The exhibition's small, limited-edition catalogue (now long since out of print), with its invaluable descriptions and thumbnail black-and-white images, has likewise been considered a shin hanga “bible” for scholars and collectors. Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints, published to complement the exhibition of the same title at the Toledo Museum of Art (October 4, 2013–January 1, 2014), reproduces and re-examines all 343 prints from the original 1930 exhibition catalogue. It features retranslated and updated information about each print and essays by four distinguished authors who explore...

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