The Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura (b. 1951) has created an internationally recognised and unmistakable body of work. In her artistic universe, there is an interweaving of plant and animal figures, landscapes and the human face. This richly illustrated volume encompasses her entire oeuvre from the 1980s to the present, with graphic art, paintings and sculpture.

Leiko Ikemura’s depiction of unity between human, animal and nature is fascinating in its quiet and calm aesthetic. After an early phase of radical expression, the artist 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 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.

Contributions by: Lisa Felicitas Mattheis, Nils Ohlsen