TOLEDO – Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints opens Friday at the Toledo Museum of
Art.The exhibit visit and reassemble in its entirety a show organized by the museum in 1930 that played a
critical role in popularizing modern Japanese woodblock prints in North America. It was the largest
exhibition ever devoted to the movement and producing an authoritative catalog to accompany it on its
nationwide tour of 10 museums.The museum has also produced a major catalog in conjunction with the show that
for the first time reproduces all 343 prints together in full color. The exhibition, organized by the
museum’s chief curator and curator of Asian art, Carolyn Putney, runs through Jan. 1."The Toledo Museum
of Art’s momentous 1930 exhibition is considered a touchstone of the early 20th-century Japanese shin hanga
movement, which revived the traditional woodblock print for the modern era," said Museum Director Brian
Kennedy. "I am delighted that a new generation of museum visitors can experience this rare opportunity
to view these incredibly vibrant and compelling images for themselves."The shin hanga movement began in
Japan around 1915 and is noted for combining traditional Japanese woodblock technique with an interest in
Western aesthetics and a vivid, modern color sensibility.The new exhibition underlines the importance of the
early 20th-century resurgence of Japanese woodblock printmaking, which has been described as "a period
of Renaissance" in the field. The prints encompass a variety of subject matter, including traditional
landscapes, seascapes, rivers and lakes, beautiful women, actors, the natural world and wildlife, cities and
towns and temples, as well as Western-inspired genre scenes and still lifes.All but five of the 343 prints
are now in the Museum’s collection. Most of these were purchased around the time of the original show and
donated to the Museum in 1939 by local businessman and print collector Hubert D. Bennett. (The Museum is
borrowing the additional five prints.) The prints have only rarely been out of storage since the 1930s and
as a result are in pristine condition.In addition to the 343 woodblock prints, the exhibition will present
companion objects depicted in the prints-such as kimonos, netsuke and samurai swords and armor-not included
in the original 1930 show.
