Current ExhibitionsExhibition
Black Lines Speak: Dürer’s “Three Great Books” Woodcuts

Dates

Saturday, 25 October 2025 - Sunday, 15 February 2026

Hours

9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Fridays, Saturdays 9:30 am – 8:00 pm
Admission ends 30 mins. before closing time

Closed

Mondays, 4 November, 25 November, 28 December, 2025 -1 January, 2026 and 13 January（Opens on 3 November, 24 November, 12 January and 9 February）

Venue

Prints and Drawings Gallery, New Wing

Admission Fees

Adults 500 yen (400 yen), college and university students 250 yen (200 yen)

• * Admission is free for Special Exhibition or The Collection ticket holders.
• * Numbers in parenthesis indicate discount fees for groups of 20 or more.
• * Free for high school students, under 18, seniors (65 and over), "Campus Members". Please show your ID upon entrance.
• * Disabled visitors admitted free of charge, with one attendant. Please present your disability identification upon arrival.
• * Free admission of this exhibition and The Collection on 9 November, 14 December, 2025,11 January, 2026 and 8 February (Kawasaki Free Sunday).
• * Free admission of this exhibition and The Collection on 3 November, 2026 (Culture Day).

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Organized by

The National Museum of Western Art

In collaboration with

The National Museum of Western Art Shibahara Keiichi Fund

The renowned Humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam stated, "What cannot Dürer express in monochromes, that is, by black lines only?" the same year that the groundbreaking Renaissance artist active in late 15th to early 16th century Germany, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) died. As Erasmus noted, "black lines," not paint colors, were the core element of Dürer's art. Through his unprecedented use of these lines and their depictive abilities, he was an artist capable of drawing unseen subjects, as well as visible events. Dürer's deep understanding of the expressive and technical potential of prints as reproductive medium made him an unparalleled figure in art history, unstinting in his use of these techniques to distribute his own works. The countless prints produced in black ink carried his experimental artistic thoughts to people across geographic and temporal distances.

This exhibition presents all of the images from Dürer’s “Three Great Books” of 1511, namely the Latin reprint version of Apocalypse, the Large Passion, and the Life of the Virgin. These three books represent Dürer's use of the then-epoch-making movable type printing method. When the NMWA opened in 1959, its collections were largely modern art, a policy which was revised in 1968 by Yamada Chisaburō when he became the museum's second director. He expanded the museum range to include active collecting of Old Master Works and acquired Dürer's Large Passion in 1970 (with one sheet acquired in 1974). This was the important starting point for the creation of the NMWA Old Master print collection. Then some fifty years later, the museum acquired Apocalypse in fiscal 2020, and the Life of the Virgin in fiscal 2022, completing the NMWA's collection of Dürer's “Three Great Books” woodcuts.

Each of the woodcuts that you will see in this display of the “Three Great Books” is from the important 1511 edition which has the Latin text printed in movable type on the back and the margins of the print image. The NMWA kept in mind the fact that he published these woodcuts not only as a series but also in book form, and it took many years for opportunities to arise to buy the correct edition of each book. This exhibition also presents examples of works by earlier artists who provided the artistic stimulation for Dürer in his production of Apocalypse, Large Passion, and Life of the Virgin. The further display of later works stimulated by Dürer's “Three Great Books” woodcuts will provide a sense of the multi-dimensional network of artistic connections surrounding these works.

Exhibition Checklist (PDF file, about 565KB) The gallery texts (PDF file, about 12.6MB)