ART STORIA, Rome (2026)

28/05/2026

Night Rain at Omiya (1930) by Hasui Kawase

Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) was one of the leading artists of the Japanese Shin-hanga (which translates to “new prints”) movement, blending traditional Ukiyo-e woodblock techniques with modern atmosphere and perspective. His landscapes are celebrated for their quiet beauty, especially scenes of rain, snow, and night, where mood and light become the true subject.

In Night Rain at Omiya, Kawase creates a peaceful and rather cinematic nighttime scene. Deep blues and soft blacks fill the composition, while the warm glow from the house windows reflects gently across the water. The tall trees and a hint of rain make the landscape feel still and secluded, turning an ordinary yet tranquil rural view into something deeply serene and timeless.

— Shane Stapley, ASAG Journal

22/05/2026

Greek Girls Playing at Ball (1889) Lord Frederic Leighton

Lord Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) was a British Academic painter and sculptor who rose to become President of the Royal Academy, and the first visual artist to be granted a hereditary peerage. Renowned for his technical mastery and deeply classical sensibility, Leighton devoted his career to recreating the idealized beauty of ancient Greece and Rome — blending archaeological precision with a romantic, sensuous warmth that set him apart from both the Pre-Raphaelites and the Impressionists of his era.

In Greek Girls Playing at Ball (1889), two young women in billowing robes toss a ball across a sun-bleached terrace high above a Mediterranean bay. The composition pulses with arrested motion, fabrics caught mid-flight, bare feet lifted from the marble, yet Leighton suffuses the scene with a timeless stillness. The luminous landscape stretching behind the figures, with its terracotta hills and shimmering sea, is less a backdrop than a meditation on the eternal youth of antiquity itself.

— Denise K. McTighe, ASAG Journal

15/05/2026

The Artist Dreaming in His Workshop (1886) by Émile-Louis Foubert

French painter Émile-Louis Foubert 1848–1911) was known for atmospheric interior scenes and psychologically rich compositions that blended academic realism with Symbolist mood and imagination. His works often explored the inner life of the artist, using light, shadow, and dreamlike imagery to blur the line between reality and vision.

In The Artist Dreaming in His Workshop (1886), Foubert transforms a quiet studio into a space of fantasy and introspection. The painter sits alone before what we assume is a blank canvas, surrounded by shadows in a muted, naturally lit room, creating a heavy, contemplative atmosphere. Above him, we see ghostly figures to which we can distinguish as his potential muses of idealized women. The objects of his imagination appear transparently in a gray-blue dreamy blur, like a vision from smoke or memory, suggesting that artistic inspiration exists first in the imagination before it becomes paint on canvas. The dramatic contrast between the dark studio and the pale, glowing figures draws the eye upward, making the dream feel like an almost sacred process. Rather than showing the act of painting itself, Foubert captures the invisible moment where creativity begins inside the artist’s mind.

— Randy H. Sooknanan, ASAG Journal

09/05/2026

L’Oubli des Passions (1913) by Jean Delville

Jean Delville (1867–1953) was a Belgian Symbolist painter and writer known for combining art with mysticism, philosophy, and spiritual ideas. Unlike many artists of his time who focused on realism or modern life, Delville used idealized figures and dramatic compositions to explore themes like transcendence, desire, and the conflict between the material and spiritual worlds.

In L’Oubli des Passions (“The Forgetting of Passions”), intertwined n**e figures appear suspended in darkness, detached from any clear physical setting. Rather than depicting a narrative scene, Delville creates a symbolic meditation on emotional detachment and spiritual release. The glowing bodies contrasted against the dark background give the painting an atmosphere that is calm, unsettling, and intensely introspective at the same time.

— Denise K. McTighe, ASAG Journal

01/05/2026

The Omnibus (1891-1892) by Anders Zorn

Anders Zorn (1860-1920) was one of Sweden’s most celebrated artists of the late 19th century, known for his virtuosic brushwork, luminous handling of light, and ability to capture fleeting moments of modern life. Trained in academic traditions but deeply attuned to Impressionist sensibilities, Zorn developed a signature style marked by a limited palette, fluid strokes, and a keen psychological presence in his figures.

Zorn's style is best described as a blend of naturalism and Impressionism, as seen in The Omnibus (1891–1892). There are actually two versions of The Omnibus (1891–1892) by Anders Zorn. Both Omnibus's are similar paintings representing contemporary urban life in Paris. A first version of the painting is located at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden. However, the second painting, which is the more renowned version, is located at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. This one, sometimes referred to as "Omnibus II," is what we are looking at today. Here, in the so-called "Omnibus II," we see how Zorn turns an everyday urban commute into an intimate study of modern anonymity. The figures sit closely together yet feel emotionally distant, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Soft, diffused light filters through the windows, while loose, expressive brushwork blurs the boundary between bodies and atmosphere, reinforcing a quiet sense of transience and isolation within shared space.

— Randy H. Sooknanan, ASAG Journal

21/04/2026

In a Café (c.1927–29) by Jeanne Mammen

Jeanne Mammen (1890–1976) was one of Weimar Berlin's most incisive visual chroniclers — a sharp-eyed observer of the city's social theatre whose work blended New Objectivity's cool detachment with a gift for psychological nuance. Though largely sidelined during the N**i years, her rediscovery placed her among the era's most vital voices, particularly in her unflinching portrayals of women navigating a world that watched them closely.

In In a Café (c.1927–29), a young woman in a cloche hat sits at a café table, chin resting on her hand, eyes cast downward in private thought. Behind her, a heavyset man leans in with a self-satisfied expression — his bulk pressing into her space — while above them both, a gaunt waiter in a bow tie looms with his tray, all angular angles and cold blue eyes. The woman is surrounded, yet utterly elsewhere. Through her signature ink-wash palette of grey, black, and electric blue, Mammen captures something achingly familiar: a woman existing quietly inside herself while the male gaze circles, oblivious to its own intrusion.

— Denise K. McTighe, ASAG Journal

15/04/2026

The Courtesan (after Eisen) (1887) by Vincent van Gogh

In this work Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) credits Keisai Eisen (1790-1848), the Japanese ukiyo-e master who created the original woodblock print that Van Gogh used as his reference. Van Gogh did not invent the central figure; he traced and enlarged a reproduction of Eisen's work that he found on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustré. While it is a copy in terms of the subject's pose, Van Gogh made the work his own by translating the flat woodcut into a textured oil painting with his own expressive brushwork and an entirely new, symbolic border. What we see finished here is a striking example of how he absorbed and reinterpreted Japanese art. Inspired by a woodblock print from the ukiyo-e tradition, Van Gogh painted this piece during a period when he was deeply fascinated by Japanese aesthetics, seeing them as pure, expressive, and emotionally direct.

This work also reflects van Gogh's connection to the broader Post-Impressionism movement, where artists moved beyond realism to emphasize color, symbolism, and personal expression. Here, Van Gogh uses bold outlines, flat areas of color, and a decorative background to echo Japanese prints, while still infusing the image with his own vivid palette and intensity. Visually, the figure stands out against a vibrant, patterned border filled with frogs and cranes, creating a sense of contrast and playful symbolism. The strong contours and simplified forms give the painting a high graphic quality, while the bright colors heighten its impact.

— Shane Stapley, ASAG Journal

08/04/2026

Begegnung (The Encounter) (1935) by Edgar Ende

Edgar Ende (1901–1965) was a German Surrealist whose work occupies a singular space as a kind of inner psychological theatre. Living through the rise of the N**i regime, his visionary paintings were condemned as “degenerate,” and a devastating portion of his work was destroyed during the Allied bombings of Munich in 1944. What remains is only a fragment of a much larger, lost world—a body of “inner pictures” that privileges dream-logic over the rigid realism of his time. This suspended, uncanny stillness would later influence the imaginative landscape of his son, Michael Ende.

In Begegnung (The Encounter) (1935), Ende presents a barren, desert-like landscape stripped to its essentials. At the center, a draped figure recoils in a sharp, almost theatrical arc, leaning away from a massive geometric wall. From the dense stone, three human forms emerge as though fused with the structure itself: one raises a palm in a silent command to halt, while another extends a pale, unrolled scroll. The surrounding space is minimal, punctuated only by a wind-bent tree and a fallen column—suggesting the ruins of a civilization, or perhaps a mind turned inward upon itself.

Rather than depicting a literal meeting, Ende constructs a psychological threshold. The painting becomes a meditation on the encounter between the individual and the buried voices embedded within the structures we inhabit. The figures within the wall suggest that history and memory are never fully erased; they persist, absorbed into the very foundations of our reality. Through muted earth tones and elongated, austere shadows, the work moves away from narrative toward a distilled, symbolic unease. In this stillness, the painting shifts from representation to presence, offering not a story, but a lingering confrontation with the unknown.

— Denise K. McTighe, ASAG Journal

01/04/2026

Lake Biwa (1910) by Shōda Kōhō

Shōda Kōhō (1871-1946) was part of the Japanese woodblock printing Shin-hanga movement, which revitalized traditional Ukiyo-e techniques with a modern sensibility. Though less widely known than some of his contemporaries, Koho specialized in evocative landscapes, often exploring mood, season, and atmosphere rather than narrative. His work reflects a sensitivity to fleeting moments—what might be called a visual haiku.

In Kōhō's "Lake Biwa" we see a quiet, atmospheric, and deeply contemplative scene. The artist invites us into a hushed nocturnal world where light and shadow dissolve into one another. A lone boat drifts across still water, its figures reduced to silhouettes, while a soft lantern glow flickers against the vast darkness. The overhanging pine branches frame the scene like a curtain, emphasizing both intimacy and distance. Kōhō’s restrained palette with cool blues are punctuated by warm amber lights. The scene also works in creating a poetic tension between human presence and the quiet immensity of nature.

— Shane Stapley, ASAG Journal

31/03/2026

The Shell Fisherman (1904) by Jan Toorop

Jan Toorop (1858–1928).was a Dutch painter born in Java (Indonesia), whose work occupies a unique position between Symbolism and early Modernism. Moving between cultures and artistic movements, Toorop developed a highly individual visual language shaped by European avant-garde currents and the linear elegance of Javanese design. His career resists easy classification, shifting from Pointillism to Symbolism to increasingly simplified, structured compositions that would influence later Dutch modernists.

In The Shell Fisherman (1904), Toorop presents a solitary coastal laborer carrying baskets of shells across a stark dune landscape. At first glance, the subject appears rooted in everyday life, echoing traditions of Dutch realism. Yet Toorop strips away narrative detail, transforming the figure into something more universal and symbolic. The fisherman stands upright and monumental, almost architectural in his presence, positioned between the horizontal calm of sea and land. The surrounding space is minimal, reducing the environment to essential forms and directing attention toward the figure’s quiet endurance.

Rather than describing a specific individual, Toorop constructs an archetype. The fisherman becomes a meditation on labor, isolation, and the enduring relationship between humanity and nature. His elongated form and controlled contours subtly reflect Toorop’s cross-cultural influences, while the restrained composition anticipates the simplification that would define modernist painting. Created during a period of stylistic transition, the work moves away from the dense symbolism of Toorop’s earlier drawings toward a more distilled and contemplative visual language. In this stillness, the painting shifts from representation to presence, offering not a story, but a state of being.

— Denise K. McTighe, ASAG Journal

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