Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, Japanese art became very appealing to and influential on the West. Known as Japonisme, this fascination represents one of the richest and most productive artistic and cultural phenomena in the relationship between East and West.
The reopening of Japanese ports in the 1860s marked the birth of Japonisme, which eventually became one of the most important and essential elements of artistic modernity in Europe during the latter half of the 1800s. Japonisme went far beyond a simple, superficial interpretation based on the popularity of exotic forms and orientalist themes. Not only did it provide subjects, motifs, compositions, techniques and formats, but ultimately it offered a poetic imagination and a vision of art that revolutionised taste. In doing so, it revealed a whole new world of ideas, formal elements and colours to draw inspiration from and reinvent Western art during the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.
Mariano Fortuny was one of the first painters in Spain to discover Japanese art. He could be considered its promoter among Spanish artists, because he integrated new aesthetic solutions based on the study of his own Japanese collection. In any case, and discarding Fortuny for the moment, during the 1870 and 1880s the vast majority of Spanish artists living or in passing thorough Paris engages in their first, superficial interaction with japonisme. Folowing the trend set by the French capital,they limited themselves to representing Japanese scenes or affluent environments where contemporary good taste dictated the inclusion of the peculiar and unusual Japanese objects that had recently begun luring in front of the east . In the field of painting, artists did not pursue in Spain the direction initiated by Fortuny ( an exploration based on the study of local Japanese art collections) until Dario Regoyos in the 1880s or even later, towards the end of the century.so, you can discover the amazing words of Madrazo, Marin Rico , the Catalan group of Quatre Gats or even the young Picasso.
Explore the current exhibitions of Japanese Art in Madrid at Caixa Forum, La Fábrica, The Prado Museum
