Japan. Arts and Life. The Montgomery Collection

An inner journey into the beauty of simplicity through the masterpieces of one of the largest and best-known collections of Japanese art outside Japan. Among the many ways one can approach a distant country there are study, travel, and a special sensitivity that allow a person to distinctly interpret the reasons behind a culture.

In the case of Jeffrey Montgomery and his splendid collection all three of these elements interact in a surprisingly harmonious way. The works he has collected during his lifetime lead to the very heart of Japanese art, accompanying us on a fascinating journey to discover the aesthetic ideals of a civilization that goes back millennia.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition in Lugano, the volume presents one hundred and seventy works from the period between the 12th and 20th centuries – including textiles, furniture, paintings, religious and everyday-objects – carefully selected from the over one thousand objects collected over a lifetime by Jeffrey Montgomery. Renowned worldwide, the Montgomery Collection displays an extraordinary richness and a very singular substance: it is a collection of “oriental art”, and at the same time it expressed a “folk culture” reinterpreted in very elevated aesthetic terms by the elegant and refined choices made by the collector who had dedicated his entire life to it.