'The wave'

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI

c.1830
Woodblock print, 25,4- 38 cm.

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Hokusai is one of the leading artists of the Ukiyo-e genre, a genius with an almost obsessive fascination with Mount Fuji, as can be seen in his greatest masterpiece, the woodblock print series of "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji"

Japanese painters and engravers have always offered us a different, almost mystical vision of the natural phenomena. The wave is here much more than a mere oceanic circumstance. It's a monster, a giant leviathan threatening with its fangs the agile and audacious ships that cross, flexible, the Japanese seas. The terrible ocean's claw is so powerful that it seems to threaten to devour even the sacred Mount Fuji, presented at the background as another victim of the evil wave

Text: G. Fernández, www.theartwolf.com

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