The exhibition itself features the NGV’s own print of The great wave, which came into the collection in 1909, and a second complementary print from the major lender, The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum.
The prints are the centrepiece of the exhibition Hokusai, which features over 170 works and opens this Friday 21 July.
One of the most comprehensive exhibitions of the artist ever staged outside of Japan, Hokusai has been produced by the NGV in collaboration with the Japan Ukiyo-Museum Matsumoto (which houses the world’s oldest collection of Japanese woodblock prints).
Hokusai is the first major presentation in Australia of one of Japan’s most influential, prolific and everlastingly popular artists, Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849). An influential master of Japanese manga and a self-proclaimed ‘drawing maniac’, Hokusai produced a body of work comprising some of the most recognisable and reproduced images in the history of Asian art, most notably The great wave.