Details

In Erupting Mt. Fuji — South Wind, Rainbow Clear Sky, Ay-O reimagines one of Japan’s most revered images: Hokusai’s famous Red Fuji from the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series. While paying homage to the original composition — maintaining the mountain’s proud form, the clear skies, and the serene cloud bands — Ay-O turns the scene on its head with characteristic exuberance. Instead of a sober, majestic landscape, Fuji erupts into a joyous torrent of rainbow colors, unfurling fantastically into the heavens. Every inch of the print hums with vibrant energy, transforming nature’s most iconic symbol into a kaleidoscopic vision of life, movement, and possibility.

Created in 1982, this woodblock print belongs to Ay-O’s celebrated Mt. Fuji series, where he reinterprets traditional Japanese themes through the radical visual language of contemporary abstraction. His rainbow gradations — a signature of his career — evoke a utopian ideal of unity, transformation, and transcendence. In Ay-O’s hands, Mt. Fuji becomes less a monument to permanence and more a dynamic, living force: a celebration of color’s ability to liberate and reimagine even the most venerated icons of the past.

Connoisseur's Note

Ay-O, often referred to as the "Rainbow Artist," emerged from Japan’s postwar avant-garde scene before gaining international renown through his association with the Fluxus movement. His fascination with spectral color — layered with painstaking precision across dozens of tones — became his artistic hallmark. In Erupting Mt. Fuji — South Wind, Rainbow Clear Sky, this mastery finds perfect expression, with the woodblock technique achieving an astonishing vibrancy and control rarely seen in the medium.

This impression, numbered 24/300, exemplifies Ay-O’s ability to blend reverence for tradition with irreverent, boundary-pushing invention. For collectors, Erupting Mt. Fuji represents a radiant intersection between Japan’s most enduring cultural symbol and the bold, universal language of color that Ay-O has made uniquely his own.