“Hokusai is not only one artist among others in the floating world, he is an island, a continent, alone a world.” (Edgar Degas)
Painter and xylographer, Katsushika Sori aka “Hokusai” (Edo 1760 – Edo 1849) is considered one of the greatest Japanese artists of all time. The artist chose the name “Hokusai” to sign his works since 1794.
Hokusai’s masterpiece arrives in 1831, when the artist is already seventy-one years old. His “Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji” includes the work “The Great Wave of Kanagawa”, considered one of the masterpieces of oriental art.
Copies of his masterpiece can be seen in various museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris or the Museum of Oriental Art in Torino.
Because of its graphic design and modernity, it is loved and successfully used in licensing for many product categories around the world.
In 1798 he created the Hokusai Manga (literally “Hokusai sketches”), the first comics ever, in which a series of images give the idea of the flow of time and history. That is why Japanese comics are actually known as “manga”.
