10 facts about hokusai

BIOGRAPHY

 “If heaven would only give me five more years of life I could become a truly great painter.”
(Hokusai’s final words before his death in )

        Hokusai was born in , sometime in October or November. He was born in the Honjo neighbourhood in Edo (present-day Tokyo), close to the Sumida River and to the countryside.

Katsushika hokusai museum Katsushika Hokusai is often credited as the most famous Japanese artist in the world. His prints were sought after throughout his life until this very day. His artistic endeavors included book illustration and painting. In the times of the infamous Edo Period, Hokusai produced an estimated 30 artworks. His ukiyo-e prints delivered a depiction of the world which was a boldly abstracted blend of Western and Japanese art.

At the age of four, he was adopted by Nakajima Ise, a mirror designer for the Tokugawa royal family. Between and , he became a woodcutter, engraving the designs of local painters. Only three years later, though, he put an end to this activity in order to become an artist himself, refusing to be a simple interpreter or translator of others’ talent.

        In order to pursue his career, at the age of eighteen he entered the studio of Katsukawa Shunsh&#;, where he adopted the name Katsukawa Shunr&#;.

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  • Biography on katsushika hokusai from greece
  • Picture of katsushika hokusai

    • In , the young painter, at twenty-nine years old, was forced to leave Katsukawa’s studio under peculiar circumstances. (As a matter of fact, Hokusai would keep the odd habit of perpetually moving, never living more than one or two months in the same place.)

    Self-Portrait of Hokusai at
    Eighty-Three    ,
    Ink on paper, x cm.
    Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden.


    He adopted the new name of S&#;ri, refusing to belong to any studio.

    From he produced many designs for surimono, deluxe single-sheet prints of poems with illustrations, made to be distributed privately, rather than in book or print shops.

    His style had by then changed radically, and it would continue to do so in two series of landscape prints from , where he adopted formal lessons of Western art. Now signing as Katsushika Hokusai (the name by which we know him today), he became a celebrated artist and attracted a large number of followers.

    Biography on katsushika hokusai from naruto Hokusai was instrumental in developing ukiyo-e from a style of portraiture largely focused on courtesans and actors into a much broader style of art that focused on landscapes, plants, and animals. His works had a significant influence on Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet during the wave of Japonisme that spread across Europe in the late 19th century. Hokusai created the monumental Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji as a response to a domestic travel boom in Japan and as part of a personal interest in Mount Fuji. Hokusai was best known for his woodblock ukiyo-e prints, but he worked in a variety of mediums including painting and book illustration. Starting as a young child, he continued working and improving his style until his death, aged

    Perhaps the best example of his acclaim was the Hokusai Manga, a series of sketchbooks published in They became tremendously popular and continued to be reprinted well into the second half of the 19th century.

    The Moon over the Yodo River and the Castle of Osaka,
    from the series Snow, Moon, and Flowers (Setsugekka), c.


    &#;ban, nishiki-e (polychrome woodblock print), 25 x cm.
    Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

            After a brief new venture into the production of surimono, Hokusai returned to the world of commercial publishing at the end of the s, now under the new name of I-itsu. Between around to , his first remarkable series of landscapes, Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, was published.

    The s proved to be a fruitful decade, as he produced many of his best-known series, such as Visiting Famous Waterfalls of Japan, Eight Views of the Ry&#;ky&#; Islands, Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poems, and another take on Mount Fuji, this time in One Hundred Views in the form of an illustrated book. These proved to be Hokusai’s masterpiece in book illustration.

    Biography on katsushika hokusai Katsushika Hokusai was a well-known Japanese artist. Katsushika Hokusai is thought to have learned art from his father. He began painting around the age of 6, and by the time he was 12 he was sent to work in a library and bookshop where many of the middle and upper class would go to appreciate wood block art and read stories. At the age of 14, he was taken in as an apprentice to learn the art of wood carving. These prints commonly depicted famous players in theater and popular landscapes.

    He saw it as a new phase in his career, thus adopting yet another name, gakyr&#;jin Manji (gakyor&#;jin meaning ‘the old man mad about drawing’).

    Mount Fuji and a Dragon (Tory&#; no Fuji), from the album One Hundred
    Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku hyakkei)    , vol. II,
    Sumizuri-e (monochrome woodblock print), x cm (each page).
    Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden.

            The years saw the height of the Temp&#; crisis, a time of widespread famine and financial hardship, which provoked a collapse in the demand for prints and printed books.

    Hokusai became extremely poor because of this, and was said to have been trying to sell his drawings in the streets. Along with many other people, he left Edo and fled to the countryside.

    Biography on katsushika hokusai hawaii

    Katsushika Hokusai was born on October 31, , in Honjo, Edo, of unknown parentage. While Hokusai moved at least ninety times throughout his lifetime, he never left this region. He was adopted as a child by the prestigious artisan-family Nakajima Ise, who made mirrors for the shogun. As a teenager, Hokusai was a delivery boy for a booklending shop and also apprenticed to a woodblock carver. At the age of eighteen, Hokusai began serious training in print design under Katsukawa Shunsho , an eminent designer in Kabuki actor and theater prints.

    Despite printing one last series of single prints (One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse) on his return, Hokusai’s production rate decreased during the last decade of his life. From then on he would dedicate his main efforts to painting. He died on 18 April (or possibly on 10 May) and he was buried at Seikyoji Temple in Asakusa, Edo.

    Hokusai was one of the most highly valued artists of his time. He was very popular among the public and proved to be greatly influential, in Japan as well as in the West.