Exhibition dedicated to the artist’s daughter, Fumiko Hasui. Gallery Nouvelle Collection

We invite you to discover the first exhibition in Poland dedicated to the exceptional work of Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), transporting visitors straight 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. Together, they form one of the most coherent and captivating collections of modern Japanese woodblock prints of the last century, representing the shin-hanga movement. This movement breathed new life into the fading tradition of ukiyo-e and revolutionised Japanese printmaking. Kawase Hasui combined centuries-old craftsmanship with Western realism, an exceptional sensitivity to light and shadow, and a nostalgic gaze upon the rapidly transforming landscape of his homeland.

Known as a poet of nostalgia and nature, Hasui was an artist who was constantly travelling. He journeyed across the country with a sketchbook in hand, capturing places that were disappearing forever under the pressure of rapid modernisation and industrialisation. His body of work is an intimate record of a profound longing for an older, more harmonious Japan.

At the exhibition, organised in collaboration with Galerie Nouvelle, visitors will be able to admire the very essence of his style. It is characterised by landscapes bathed in rain, snow-covered rural temples, majestic castles in the moonlight, and coastal villages immersed in the evening twilight. Hasui had an unparalleled ability to capture the melancholy of an ephemeral moment. A distinctive feature of his work is the almost complete absence of dynamic scenes of human activity, giving way instead to the omnipresent, monumental force of nature. When people do appear in his woodblock prints, they usually take the form of solitary travellers sheltered beneath traditional umbrellas, fully integrated into the world around them.

At the heart of the exhibition is a journey through a Japan that is quiet, mysterious, and filled with inner tranquillity – a world that, although lost forever, remains eternally alive thanks to Kawase Hasui’s woodblocks. The artistry and production of shin-hanga prints relied on exceptionally close, almost organic collaboration between the artist, the woodblock carver, the printer, and the publisher – in Hasui’s case, the legendary Shōzaburō Watanabe.