OPEN-AIR MUSEUM

 OPEN-AIR MUSEUM

At the Round-Shaped Plaza of the museum, sculptures of Rodin's "Balzac" as well as those of Maillol and Bourdelle stand in the grand backdrop of Hakone's welcoming natural landscape. You will also find over 100 pieces of modern and contemporary masterpieces in the 70,000 m² landscape.

THE PICASSO COLLECTION The Picasso Pavilion, devoted to the work of the twentieth century Spanish master, Pablo Picasso, was established on the grounds of the Hakone Open-Air Museum in 1984, the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the museum. We decided to establish this pavilion, the first Picasso museum in Japan, after we acquired 188 pieces of Picasso’s ceramic art that had been inherited by his oldest daughter, Maya. This purchase was followed by the purchase of a variety of other objects, including oil paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, gold objects, silver compotes, gemmail glass art, and tapestries. After the museum opened, we continued acquiring prints and drawings.

Our Picasso collection now numbers more than 300 items, providing an opportunity for the many people who visit Hakone to experience the works of art produced by this artist in his successive creative cycles. Picasso became seriously involved with ceramics, which form the core of our collection, at the Vallauris studio in southern France after he was 65 years of age. They reveal his obvious pleasure in manipulating the clay and colors as he brought together sculptural and painterly elements to create these works.

The Hakone Open-Air Museum also makes a collection of photographs on the production and lifestyle of Picasso in addition to his artwork. David Douglas Duncan (1916-) is an internationally known photojournalist. During the 17 years from 1956 to Picasso's death at age 91, he maintained close relations with Picasso and had taken a number of photographs while paying frequent visits to Picasso's studio and residence located in three areas including Cannes.

 THE HENRY MOORE COLLECTION

The Hakone Open-Air Museum has one of the world's largest collections of works by the English master sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986). The twenty-six piece rotating exhibit in our collection offers the visitor a penetrating look into the artistic sensibilities of this sculptor who famously proclaimed that "sculpture is an art of the open air".

The lure of Moore´s sculpture lies in the organized form and volume as well as the space created by the mass of divided composition. Simplicity based on the form of human figure and natural resources, such as bones, pebbles, shells and wood is represented in curved lines, which virtually harmonizes with the flexibility of nature and gives the form a solid stability.

Moore himself said, "There is no background to sculpture better than the sky, because you are contrasting solid form with its opposite space." The collections at the Hakone Open-Air Museum are located in the vast open space in the backdrop of the mountains of Hakone, where the charm of each sculpture is maximized.

http://www.hakone-oam.or.jp/english/collection.html