Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Under the Wave off Kanagawa)

The Great Wave off Kanagawa Created during Japan's Edo period, Hokusai's iconic woodblock print revolutionized how artists depicted landscape and motion, capturing the dramatic power of nature with bold compositional lines and Prussian blue pigment imported from Europe. This 1832 masterpiece exemplifies *ukiyo-e* (pictures of the floating world), a popular Japanese printmaking tradition that elevated everyday scenes and natural phenomena to fine art status. The print's dynamic perspective—with the towering wave threatening tiny Mount Fuji in the distance—challenged Western artistic conventions and profoundly influenced European modernists from the Impressionists onward.