English

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英文概要

Overview

To commemorate the post-renovation reopening of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo,
we offer an exhibition that traces the development of modern art born out of the dialogue between
nature and humankind.
The event has been realized in collaboration with the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.
Both institutions were founded on private collections: that of Karl Ernst Osthaus [1874–1921] in
the one case and Matsukata Kōjirō [1866–1950] in the other. As we can see, these two men were
near contemporaries. Earlier in the year, modern artworks from the Matsukata Collection and
the Osthaus Collection were brought together for another showing in Germany, Renoir, Monet,
Gauguin: Images of a Floating World (6 February–15 May 2022, Museum Folkwang).
The present exhibition, In Dialogue with Nature, comprises works collected from the museumsʼ
earliest beginnings down to the present day: paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs,
spanning from German Romanticism to the art of the twentieth century (with Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism at the core). It sets out to explore how sensibility to nature has contributed to
the development of artistic expression in the modern era.
The transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries was accompanied by rapid
modernization in many fields: industry, society, science. Artists, looking at nature with new
knowledge and an altered gaze, created a diverse range of works in response to this always fertile
source of inspiration. Some leapt from the studio into the light of the open air, attempting to grasp
the ephemeral moment; others, in the pursuit of an eternal vision of nature, relied on their own
insights or experimented with innovative forms. Certain works chose cycles of nature on which to
project human endeavors.
Please enjoy the reverberations of these manifold images, hewn out of the infinite expanse of
nature, the fruits of two combined collections: everything from the smallest roadside flowers to the
vast universe and all humanity contained therein. At a time when the relationship between nature
and humankind is undergoing profound reassessment, we sincerely hope the artworks on display
may lead visitors to a creative and heartfelt dialogue with the natural world.