Japanese Modernity and Nostalgia
Our “Nihonga” Collection reflects a short lived, yet energetic and dynamic period in Japan’s long history when new social and democratic thinking as well as modern art forms were being imported from the West.
Europe had been importing Japanese woodblock prints for more than a century as many of their artists absorbed and combined those influences into much of their own work. In the first half of the twentieth century it was Japan’s turn to look both West and East and embrace and combine many of those artistic movements into figurative art of their own.
These ideas and images collided with Japan’s fourteen hundred years of conservative social mores, customs and rules. In the early 20th century Nihonga periods, this tension created social innovations and art that became unique expressions of Japan’s modern age.
In form, the works of art are on panels, in framed paintings and on scrolls and screens. They are painted in mineral pigments in the traditional Japanese style of Nihonga and mounted on silk or paper.
We shall display these exquisite works as well as the biography of each artist and the historical connection of the paintings to the innovations and cultural influences affecting the Japanese art world in this tumultuous new age.
Our Collection is possibly the only figurative painting collection of the art of this period remaining outside of Japan. Much of the Nihonga art, produced mainly between the two World Wars, was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake and again in the 1945 bombing of Tokyo and Yokohama when those two cities were decimated by fire.
“Nihonga” shines a spotlight on the short-lived, vibrant time during the early 20th century when Japan’s art reflected exciting new directions. It assimilated European, American and Asian influences and moved toward a unique Japanese expression of Modernism in figurative art.
It is my hope that future museum visitors, students and scholars will have the opportunity to see our “Nihonga” Collection, enjoy the art, and gain a better understanding of the dynamic Japanese climate into which it was introduced.
Marie Bernhard