Pure poetry: the art of Leiko Ikemura, between reality and fairytale, between Europe and Japan.

The Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura (born 1951) has created an internationally recognized and unmistakable body of work. In her artistic universe, there is an interweaving of plant and animal figures, landscapes, and the human face. Ikemura’s depiction of unity between human, animal, and nature is fascinating in its quiet and calm aesthetic. This richly illustrated volume encompasses her entire oeuvre from the 1980s to the present, with graphic art, paintings, and sculpture.

After an early phase of radical expression, Ikemura has dedicated herself to a gentle and poetic pictorial language. In her works, European subjects such as landscapes and portraits are melded with Japanese elements of suggestiveness, incompletion, and asymmetry. Hybrid beings and creatures refer to Japanese fairy tales and sayings and allow the invisible to become visible—a magical world that refuses to let you go.