Exhibition ended. Palazzo delle Paure, Lecco · 21 March–27 September 2026. This article revisits the exhibition’s themes through official sources.
The 2026 Hokusai exhibition in Lecco, Il segreto dell’Onda che attraversa l’Europa, invited a fresh look at a familiar image. The Great Wave appears in books, homes and puzzle boxes. Follow the water, mountain and boat lines to discover how the scene is constructed.
Editorial illustration created for Puzzle Arte to accompany this article.
The Palazzo delle Paure exhibition, curated by Paolo Linetti and organised by ViDi cultural and Ponte43 with the Municipality of Lecco and its museum system, presented 43 Hokusai works. The municipality’s presentation identified water as a central theme, including waves, waterfalls and foam. Works mentioned included Whale Hunting and Fuji Seen from the Sea. Consider how differently a line can express moving water.
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, commonly called The Great Wave, belongs to the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates its colour woodblock print to about 1830–1832. Small, distant Fuji is framed by the wave.
Follow the crest, then find the mountain and boats. Broad curves, compact profiles and elongated lines organise the scene differently, while foam fragments movement into small marks. Try changing your starting point.
Woodblock printing transfers outlines and colours from carved blocks to paper. The Met’s account of ukiyo-e printing describes artist, carver, printer and publisher working together, with separate colour blocks precisely aligned.
Read a museum record’s technique, date and object identification alongside its title. These distinguish a familiar image from a particular surviving impression.
The Met’s scientific research on The Great Wave identifies indigo and Prussian blue, with mixtures and overlapping impressions deepening dark passages.
Compare the blue outlines and larger areas in a reproduction. Photography, modern printing and screens can differ, so treat the comparison as observation rather than an assessment of the original from one digital image.
The mountain, boats and foam tips offer assembly references, while similar-coloured areas require attention to line direction. Difficulty varies with image, size, cut and piece count.
Browse the Hokusai collection and compare each full product image with the work you want. Museum records remain the source for artwork history and technique.
Continue with our Japanese puzzles to explore editions of The Great Wave.
Return to the museum resources for lines, water and colour, or read Japanese art and the dialogue between Hokusai and Monet for the encounter with Western painting.
Exhibition details: Municipality of Lecco, consulted 8 October 2026. Artwork and technique: Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met impression discussed is not identified here as a loan to the Lecco exhibition.
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