Impressioni d’Oriente. Arte e collezionismo tra Europa e Giappone

The history of Western taste for the Far East is the story of a long-lasting obsession. The exhibition Impressions of the Orient. Art and Collecting between Europe and Japan , is curated by Flemming Friborg and Paola Zatti and explores the dynamics of the varied artistic interchanges between Europe and Japan at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The term Japonism sums up all these aspects and marks the most intense phase of European interest in the Japanese world and culture. The exhibition examines the key themes and currents that animated interest in Japan and Japanism in artistic, literary, and philosophical circles. The art-historical analysis pays special attention to the context of trade relations, entrepreneurial adventures and strong global curiosity characteristic of the period. Within the varied context of the international taste for Japan and its influence in the arts, the exhibition focuses on the major Italian and European artists who were under the spell of Japanism. The relationship between European and Japanese art will be explored in order to understand the extent to which Modernism made use of “Japanese” styles and techniques in its search for new languages and tools to open up to the future in a rapidly changing world.The exhibition Impressions of the Orient will also show how artists such as Hokusai, Hiroshige or Utamaro dreamed of Western art, playing with synthetic colors and central perspective, those same elements that Western artists were so happy not to find in Japan. Works from different Japanese art schools and movements between 1890 and 1930 rarely exhibited or contextualized will be on display, giving space to the world of collecting and to those who first reached Japan, undergoing its fascination and beginning to collect its objects and artifacts, helping to spread its taste in Europe.