Exhibition: Prints of Prince Genji. The art of gallantry of ancient Japan

The novel Genji Monogatari, written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu in the year 1006, is the most important work of Japanese literature and represents the classical aesthetic values ​​of Japanese culture. Its protagonist, Prince Genji, is the epitome of ancient Japanese gallantry: elegant, cultured, sentimental, and seductive. Genji dominates all the arts, poetry, music, dance; He has good taste in dressing, in getting a gift right, and is capable of solving any situation with ingenuity.

In the XNUMXth century there were writers who made parodies and plays about their adventures. The prints illustrating his most famous episodes multiplied and the ones preferred by the public were those made by the Utagawa school, represented in this exhibition with works by great artists such as Kunisada, Kuniyoshi, Kunisada II, Yoshiiku and Kunichika. At the end of that century, Ogata Gekkō, one of the last masters of the ukiyo-e, nostalgically recovered the classicism of the original story.

This exhibition traces the traces of Prince Genji in the art of Japanese engraving through a selection of fifty original works by the most outstanding artists.