An exhibition of Ono Hatsuko dolls “Under the branches of cherry blossoms” opens in the Museum of the East

From April 19 to May 19, the State Museum of the East presents the exhibition “Under the branches of cherry blossoms. Ono Hatsuko dolls.

In the April flow of artistic life in Moscow, an exhibition of Japanese dolls will occupy a special place. About thirty puppet images vividly and extremely emotionally present different human types, mostly female.

The dolls were created by the artist Ono Hatsuko (1915-1982), who is one of the most interesting puppet masters in Japanese decorative art of the twentieth century. The artist was born in 1915 in Osaka, at the age of 16 she began to study Western oil painting, then became interested in the design of clothes, which eventually led her to the creation of author dolls. From the mid-1960s, Ono Hatsuko began to take part in exhibitions of art crafts and specialized shows of designer dolls, where her works received consistently high marks. So, for example, the famous Polish director Andrzej Wajda talked about the artist’s work: “Her dolls can be perceived as three-dimensional pictures of Ukiyo-e”.

During her lifetime, Ono Hatsuko never saw her author's exhibition. Since the beginning of the 2000s, thanks to her daughter, who organizes an exhibition of her mother's works, a lot of people in different countries of the world got acquainted with the original work of the artist.

Visitors to the Museum of the East will not only see cute dolls representing women, children, actors of the Kabuki Theater, but will plunge into the fascinating world of female emotions and moods. All dolls are of high quality, delicate taste in the selection of clothing fabrics and accessories.

Each doll, thanks to the original artistic vision of the author, precise observation and expressive plastic, demonstrates figurative pithiness, painted with a contemplative mood, sometimes with light humor, now with female coquetry. This is a kind of miniature sculpture theater "under the branches of blossoming cherry trees".