Secretly collected in Europe by famous artists such as Gustav Klimt and Émile Zola at the opening of Japan to the West in 1868, ukiyo-e prints contribute to the birth and development of the Japonisme in the late nineteenth century.

The exhibition The Art of Love in the Time of geishas: prohibited masterpieces of Japanese art offers over 200 prints, photographs to albumin and objects of daily life from the Museo delle Culture Lugano and other major public museums and private collections in Switzerland and Italy. A collection of modern and contemporary works, manga prints and paintings, shows the continuity of this tradition into erotic contemporary Japan.

Find the Wisp a rare meeting of the three albums Shonga (Picture of spring), from the series Tokaido (Fifty-three Stations on the Tokaido Road) respectively bearing the subtitle heaven, man and earth. The author of the text seems to be Tamenaga Shunsui, who wrote many stories of sexual topography.
Engraved by Horitake. 26 prints with erotic and pornographic, the vast majority of double page.




More information about the exhibition here.