The Yamatane Museum of Art’s heartwarming winter exhibition celebrates the many forms of love expressed in modern and contemporary Japanese painting. From romantic passion to familial tenderness, and from nostalgia for one’s hometown to affection for animals, ‘Love’ reveals how artists have captured its subject’s diverse and intimate dimensions.
Highlights include Kiyokata Kaburaki’s Light Snow (from the Fukutomi Taro collection), inspired by Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s tragic love story The Courier for Hell; Gyoshu Hayami’s Peach Blossoms, painted to commemorate his daughter’s first festival; and Togyu Okumura’s Rabbit, radiating the artist’s affection for living creatures. Works by Tsunetomi Kitano, Terukata Ikeda and Shoko Kawasaki further expand this exploration of emotion and beauty.
You’ll also encounter Kokei Kobayashi’s eight-panel Kiyohime series, a masterful retelling of a tragic love legend, and selections from the distinguished Fukutomi Taro Collection. Timed with the season of Christmas, New Year and Valentine’s Day, the exhibition invites audiences to rediscover love as a timeless muse for Japanese artists and their poetic visions of life.
All exhibited works are from the Yamatane Museum of Art collection unless specified otherwise.
