In a long and successful career, Hokusai produced over 30,000 paintings, sketches, woodblock prints, and images for picture books. Innovative in his compositions and exceptional in his drawing technique, Hokusai is considered one of the greatest masters in the history of art.
Hokusai is widely recognized as one of Japan's greatest artists, having modernized traditional print styles through his innovations in subject and composition. His work celebrated Japan as a unified nation, depicting a diversity of landscapes and activities linked by shared symbols and stories.
Hokusai was a Japanese master artist and printmaker of the ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) school. His famous print series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,” published between 1826 and 1833, marked the summit in the history of the Japanese landscape print.
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎, listen (help info), c. – ) was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by Sesshū Tōyō and other styles of Chinese painting.
Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best-known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (c. 1831) which includes the iconic and internationally recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s.
H ighly regarded as one of the great masters of ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was a printmaker and painter whose revolutionary work and enduring legacy has cemented him a prolific place within the art historical canon.
No one knows for certain, but Katsushika Hokusai is thought to have been born on 30 October 1760 — the 23rd day of the ninth month of the 10th year of Japan’s Hōreki era. His father is believed to have been Nakajima Ise, the official mirror-maker for the country’s Shogun.