Please note: this tour will be held in German.
In this themed tour, we focus on the varieties of abstraction. Impressionist artists had already begun to simplify, dissolve, or rearrange the visible world. Forms became areas of color, contours lost their sharpness, and light and mood took center stage rather than precise detail. This created an tension between representationalism and dissolution, a transition in which modern abstraction is already laid out.

This tour focuses on the influence of Japanese art on French Impressionism. After the World’s Fairs in Vienna and Paris in the 1870s, a veritable Japan fever spread throughout Europe—in particular, the motifs and compositions of Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) influenced French Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir, and Bonnard.

The tour will be led by Nana Tazuke-Steiniger, M.A. Her research focuses on the history of collecting and exhibiting Japanese art in the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly in the context of foreign relations between Germany and Japan.