Kimono - Reflections of art between Japan and the West

Until November 19, at the Textile Museum in Prato, it will be possible to admire the new exhibition "Kimono - Reflections of Art between Japan and the West": paintings, woodcuts, vintage postcards, prints and textiles from both important private collections and unpublished collections of the Textile Museum, but above all the fifty men's and women's kimonos belonging to the exclusive collection of Lydia Manavello.

The exhibition explores the creative and cultural exchange between Europe and Japan, through works that bear witness to its fundamental transitions, between the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It illustrates the well-known phenomenon of Japonism: how the artistic expressions of European art of that period drew on and reinterpreted the expressive and decorative language of Japanese art, represented in the exhibition by works by Hiroshige, Utamaro and Hokusai. But above all, it aims to tell the opposite process, the phenomenon of Westernism, an aspect little known to most: the influence of Western culture and artistic expression in Japanese art through the most iconic object of Japan's culture, the kimono.

The kimonos in the exhibition, in textured, embroidered or printed silk, testify to the attraction to the West and the suggestions from the formal innovations of European avant-gardes such as Futurism, Secession and Cubism, which in the early 20th century profoundly altered Japan's traditional decorative language.

Information:

• opening hours - Tuesday/Thursday 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Friday/Saturday 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Sunday 3-7 p.m.
• online ticket purchase - www.museodeltessuto.it/mostre/kimono

The exhibition is organized by the Textile Museum in Prato, in collaboration with the Museum of Fashion and Applied Arts in Gorizia, under the prestigious patronage of the Embassy of Japan in Italy.