Shinhanga: A Revolution in Japanese Prints at Rome's San Salvatore in Lauro

The exhibition 'Gli Shinhanga. Una rivoluzione nelle stampe giapponesi' at the Museo di San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome, open until June 15, 2025, explores the Shinhanga (new prints) movement that emerged in early 20th-century Japan as a response to modernization. Curated by Paola Scrolavezza and organized by Vertigo Syndrome in collaboration with Il Cigno Arte, the show features over one hundred woodblock prints from private collections and the Japanese Gallery Kensington in London. It includes vintage videos, traditional kimonos, illustrated magazines, historical photographs, and a soundtrack evoking the era's musical atmosphere. The Shinhanga movement, lasting from the early 1900s to after World War II, blended traditional Japanese subjects—temples, Kabuki actors, tea ceremonies, rice paddies, flowers, birds, bamboo, cherry blossoms—with Western techniques like light, shadow, and perspective, introducing realism and melancholic atmospheres. Key artists include Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), known for moonlit or rainy landscapes, and Itō Shinsui (1898–1972), who depicted intimate bijinga (portraits of beautiful women). The exhibition also highlights early Japanese fascination with the West, exemplified by Utagawa Yoshitora's print imagining a scene in the United States with hot air balloons, and later Shinhanga artists' travels to Venice, London, Giza, and Athens.