What’s on the Ukiyo-e poster
A definition and 6 facts worth remembering.
Woodblock prints of the Edo period, roughly 1660 to 1860, made for a mass urban market in Japan by a team: publisher, designer, block carver and printer.
- Pictures of the floating world: theatre, city, travel.
- Moronobu, Utamaro, Sharaku, Hokusai, Hiroshige.
- Flat colour areas, strong outline, no cast shadow.
- Radical cropping and high, asymmetric viewpoints.
- Multi-block colour printing, registered by hand.
- A commercial product, priced like a bowl of noodles.
- Period — about 1660 to 1860
- Made by — a team of four
- Hokusai's Great Wave, about 1831, was one sheet from a series of thirty-six views.
Japonisme reversed the flow: Degas, Cassatt, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec took cropping and flat colour from these prints.
Questions about the Ukiyo-e poster
- What’s on the Ukiyo-e poster?
- A definition and 6 facts worth remembering. Woodblock prints of the Edo period, roughly 1660 to 1860, made for a mass urban market in Japan by a team: publisher, designer, block carver and printer. Pictures of the floating world: theatre, city, travel.; Moronobu, Utamaro, Sharaku, Hokusai, Hiroshige.; Flat colour areas, strong outline, no cast shadow.; Radical cropping and high, asymmetric viewpoints.; Multi-block colour printing, registered by hand.; A commercial product, priced like a bowl of noodles.; Period — about 1660 to 1860; Made by — a team of four; Hokusai's Great Wave, about 1831, was one sheet from a series of thirty-six views.. Japonisme reversed the flow: Degas, Cassatt, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec took cropping and flat colour from these prints.
- Who is the Ukiyo-e poster for?
- Ukiyo-e belongs to the Art & Design section rather than to a school year, because design is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning art history can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.
- When should you use the Ukiyo-e poster?
- Use it to see flat colour, cropping and asymmetry worked out two centuries early. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Ukiyo-e belongs on the wall where that design work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.
- What other posters go with Ukiyo-e?
- Abstract Expressionism, Arts & Crafts and Bauhaus sit alongside Ukiyo-e in the Art & Design section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.Abstract ExpressionismArts & CraftsBauhaus
- Is the Ukiyo-e poster free to download and print?
- Yes. Ukiyo-e downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Art & Design section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence
- What size does the Ukiyo-e poster print at?
- Ukiyo-e is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Ukiyo-e loses nothing.Printing guide
Related posters
Charts that sit alongside Ukiyo-e on the same wall.
Browse every Art & Design poster, or start from the full catalogue.