Naohito Watanabe, consul of Japan in Barcelona and honorary academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), presented on September 20 the exhibition “Realismo japonés contemporáneo” (Contemporary Japanese Realism), which is exhibited at the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) of Barcelona until next December 2. The exhibition has the collaboration of the Hoki Museum of Chiba (Japan), the Consulate of Japan in Barcelona and the Japan Foundation, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Spain and Japan.
The MEAM, entity that promotes and disseminates the figurative art of the 20th and 21st centuries, presents for the first time in Europe the work of the most prestigious contemporary Japanese artists in the field of figuration and realism. The exhibition brings together the 60 most outstanding works of the permanent fund of the Hoki Museum, the first museum in Japan dedicated exclusively to the current realistic painting. Among the main motifs of the works are the female figures endowed with the sensitivity and exquisiteness of Japanese art or carefully worked landscapes. “Realismo japonés contemporáneo” has the participation of 14 Japanese painters of great prestige, among which the pioneer Hiroshi Noda (1936) or Masayuki Hara (1956).
As a correspondence, starting in 2019, the MEAM will organize a large collective exhibition with more than 50 current figurative Spanish artists in the Hoki Museum and other points of reference in Japan. Later, it will present an anthological sample of the Hungarian painter István Sándorfi. The MEAM is a private initiative of the Spanish Foundation of Arts and Artists.
