Featured Events in Hakone in December, 2024 (May Updated)

The exhibition will feature 11 three-dimensional works and 18 two-dimensional works, including new acquisitions, centered around Inoue Bukichi's "My Sky Hole 94-6 Forest Labyrinth," which can be said to be the signature piece of the museum, in the main gallery, which has remained in the same condition since the museum first opened.

Hayami Gyoshu (1894-1935) was active in Tokyo from the end of the Meiji period to the beginning of the Showa period, and left a major mark on modern Japanese painting. His excellent works and his pure, spiritually-minded approach to painting earned him the respect of other artists of the time, and Tanaka Isson (1908-1977), who was 14 years his junior, was also one of those who respected Gyoshu. Gyoshu's "Magnolia (Spring Garden Beauty)" and Isson's "White Flowers and Red Jade," both of which are housed in our museum, are considered representative works of their respective artists. They depict the natural world with a dignified style, and convey that they both aimed to reach a higher level of artistic expression, transcending differences in era, environment, materials and techniques. To commemorate the 90th anniversary of Gyoshu's death in 2025, four of Gyoshu's works and seven of Isson's works will be exhibited together, centered around their respective masterpieces, Gyoshu's "Magnolia (Spring Garden Beauty)" and Isson's "White Flowers and Red Jade," both of which are housed in the museum (two of Isson's works are in private collections, the others in the museum's collection). In addition, works by Kano Hogai, Hashimoto Gaho, Tomioka Tessai, Ohashi Suiseki, Yokoyama Taikan, Shimomura Kanzan, Hishida Shunso, Kawai Gyokudō, Uemura Shōen, Kaburagi Kiyokata, Kobayashi Kokei, Maeda Seison, Okumura Togyu, Tsuchida Bakusen, Murakami Kagaku, Higashiyama Kaii, Kayama Matazo and others will be on display, allowing visitors to enjoy a total of 50 exquisite Japanese paintings spanning the early Meiji, Taisho, and late Showa periods.

Due to the diversification and personalization of contemporary society, color has come to play an increasingly important role not only in fashion and interior design but also in fields such as the environment, health, and beauty. Meanwhile, as smartphones, an ever present part of our lives, now have the ability to reproduce over one billion colors, we have become unknowingly engulfed in a vast world of color. In this exhibition, focusing on color in art from the modern to the contemporary era, we reconsider the role of color while touching on subjects such as the relationship between color theory and the materials used to express color. This reinterpretation of the history of color in modern and contemporary art is based primarily on paintings, sculptures, and installations by creators such as the Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painters of the 19thcentury who deftly manipulated tubes of oil paint to reconstruct a visual world with a wide range of colors; the Fauvists and abstract painters of the 20th century; and contemporary artists who altered the viewer’s physical sensations through the effects of color.