Many exhibitions on Kuniyoshi and his era have taken place across the globe in recent years, mainly focusing on political critique and humoristic narratives, also “tales of heroes.” Significantly, these are the very themes that are only sparsely represented in the extensive MAK Asia Collection.

The MAK houses color woodcuts by Kuniyoshi and his contemporaries that in their profile and compilation are unique across the world. The collection of Japanese color woodblock prints from the late Edo Period was compiled for the most part around 1900; here, two collector personalities must be singled out: Heinrich Siebold (1852–1908), whose collection found its way between 1892 and 1905 into the Viennese collections of Asian art, and Richard Lieben (1842–1919), from whose estate an extensive and superlative ukiyo-e collection was bequeathed to the MAK.

Therefore this exhibition in the anniversary year is a wonderfully fitting opportunity to show Kuniyoshi’s works in the way that only such collections with their historically compiled holdings are capable of and therefore, in addition, to provide insight into the strategy of European ukiyo-e collectors in Vienna around 1900. In a total of eight sections, the exhibition KUNIYOSHI + positions his work in the center of the Utagawa school: innovations in content and aesthetics make Kuniyoshi’s oeuvre act as a mirror reflecting the great political and social changes in Japan in the nineteenth century.