Japonisme or, in other words, the presence, the attraction and the impact of Japanese art, was one of the most fruitful artistic phenomenons which resulted from the relationships between the East and West. In this book, Ricard Bru approaches the fascinating cultural phenomenon of Japonisme from an innovative standpoint: The arrival of Japanese erotic prints to the Western world and their impact on Western artists from mid-nineteenth century onwards.

By focusing on a less-known aspect of Japonisme, which up until now was not investigated seriously, Bru documents and presents how the erotic shunga prints seduced a great number of people, converting thus into a fertile and original source of inspiration in Europe during the end of the nineteenth century, through the work of critics and writers, such as Goncourt, Huysmans or Zola, and of artists, such as Degas, Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rops, Klimt or Picasso.

Ricard Bru (Ph.D. in Art History) has been a professor of Nineteenth-Century Art History at the University of Barcelona and he is currently working for the Institute of Culture of Barcelona. He curated the resent exhibitions "Secret Images: Picasso and the Japanese Erotic Print" (2009), and "Japonisme: The Fascination of Japanese Art" ("Japonismo: La fascinación por el arte japonés") (2013).