The eponymous exhibition commemorating the 130th year since the death of Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-89) at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art is the latest in a crescendo of Kyosai exhibitions. The 200-odd works on show celebrate the eccentric painter and printmaker’s pictorial diversity produced within 19th-century Japan’s social restructuring and modernizing tumult.
The crests and troughs of Kyosai’s reputation are almost alarming. An overachieving infant, he sketched at age 3, studied ukiyo-e with Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) from 7 and joined the Surugadai branch of the late-traditional Kano school of painting at age 10.
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