Katsushika Hokusai. Lived 1760-1849
Japanese artist Katsushika used stylised shapes, thick outlines of Prussian blue ink and flat blocks of vivid colour, a bit like a graphic novel. People in Japan bought his prints of popular or sacred sites as souvenirs. When people in industrialised Europe saw them they thought Japan was an unspoiled paradise!
By studying Hokusai’s work closely, how he used the colour blue for outlines, his print techniques and how the colours brighten or fade with each print, show his influence of later modernist artists, like Van Gogh, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustave Klimt and Degas and those in the Popart movement.