Hokusai: the blue wave, crowned with foam, rising above Mount Fuji; the famous volcano idealised and reinvented by the artist in every nuance of view, season and painting; extraordinary bridges, the waterfalls of Japan, the contortions, the costumes, the gestures, the very breath of men, women, peasants, citizens, warriors, craftsmen, leaping horses, birds, insects, fish, almost alive on the ground on which are painted the countless imaginative drawings or vivid sketches made in situ for Manga, Hokusai's record of forms and figures taken from life or imagined over time. With an oeuvre spanning more than 30,000 drawings and paintings, Hokusai (1760-1849) was the most prolific, varied and arguably the most creative artist of old Japan. A universal genius in all that constituted drawing and painting in his time, he practised all genres of ukiyo-e, those 'pictures of the floating world', as his contemporaries used to describe their pleasures and daily life.

This book follows the career of this boy from a working-class neighbourhood in old Tokyo, then known as Edo, evoking the special atmosphere of this great city and of Japanese life, when Japan, closed to foreigners, developed a powerfully original culture in a vacuum. Hokusai became one of the great masters of woodcut, this 'uncontrolled brush', as he called himself, being rediscovered by the Impressionists and aesthetes at the end of the 19th century. He remains one of the greatest figures and, thanks to his personality, one of the most attractive figures in world art.

Publisher: Thames and Hudson