Detail: 2014 Switzerland and Japan celebrate 150 years of diplomatic relations. To honour this occasion, we will show a solo exhibition devoted to the work of the Zen master and painter Gibon Sengai (1750–1837). His sketch-like images, which are accompanied by texts that combine humour with profundity, still seem startlingly contemporary.

Gibon Sengai was abbot of Japan’s oldest Zen monastery. He retired at the age of sixty-two to devote himself exclusively to painting and calligraphy, which he used as teaching materials for his pupils. He saw his art as a way of helping people—even very simple people—to understand Zen Buddhism. Right up to the nineteen-eighties, the West was in the grip of Zen fever, not least on account of the writings of the Zen teacher and Sengai expert, Daisetz T. Suzuki (1870–1966). Sengai’s centrality to Zen is evident from what another abbot allegedly replied when asked how to study Zen: “Look at Sengai. There is Zen everywhere.”

The timelessness of these very modern-looking paintings has to do with both their semantically charged simplicity and with the subtle sense of humor that shines through in Sengai’s amiably ironic take on all the big questions of human existence. His paintings radiate a deeply humane wisdom, which can scarcely leave anyone untouched.

The Idemitsu Museum of Arts in Tokyo is the proud owner of the world’s most important collection of ink paintings and calligraphy by Zen master Sengai. Now, for the first time in over fifty years, forty of these works are to go on show in Zurich in honor of 150 years of diplomatic relations between Switzerland and Japan. Because they are extremely sensitive to light, the works are to be exhibited in two series lasting six weeks each.

EXHIBITION IN THE MEDIA
“Von einem lachenden Frosch und Schlangen mit explosivem Atem”
(Zentrum Karl der Grosse, Felix Ghezzi, 27/05/2014)

“Der humorvolle Zen-Meister”
(Tagesanzeiger, 26/05/2014)

“Leichte Linie, grosse Offenheit”
(Der Landbote, Angelika Maass, 24/05/2014)

“Buddha ist ein Frosch”
(NZZ, Philipp Meier, 17/05/2014)

“Das Museum Rietberg zeigt die Werke eines Zen-Meisters mit feinem Humor”
(Aargauer Zeitung, Oltner Tagblatt, Solothurner Zeitung, 16/05/2014)