Antique Japanese Art

 Welcome to our homepage for Japanese art. Let us invite you to discover our collection of fine antique art works that covers a broad range from paintings on screens and hanging scroll, traditional ceramics, elegant lacquer works, exceptional sculptural works, and skillfully woven bamboo flower baskets. All our objects are unique masterpieces carefully selected by the gallerist and art historian Dr. Fabian Alexander Kommoss due to their historical importance and outstanding quality. Galerie Kommoss is a leading gallery for fine Japanese art in Europe.

Why Japanese Art?

Refined elegance and astonishing crafting skills on one side and rough coarse-looking ceramics, that seem to be created by nature itself, on the other – the vast spectrum of Japanese art is fascinating and never gets monotonous. In fact, the opposite is the case: Either you look at the more popular and immediately appealing images of a Hokusai, the serene beauty of Japanese Buddhist sculpture or you start to deal with the complex aesthetical programs of the traditional tea culture, the deeper you dive the complex images, often subtly imbued with metaphorical meanings or humor, the more exciting it gets. What makes Japanese art so attractive to us, is its pervasive characteristic to understand the natural world as a source of spiritual insight and an instructive mirror of human emotion.

Object of the Month

A guilt-lacquered wood figure of Amida Buddha, standing on a high stand on a double-lotus pedestal in front of an elaborately decorated mandorla with swirling clouds and an abstract open-worked lotus flower highlighting his head. The figure shows a serene facial expression with half-opened eyes made of inlaid crystal eyes with painted pupils looking downwards in front of the figure.

The right arm raised and the left arm extended, both hands are opened with the palm to the viewer while the thumb and forefinger are forming a circle. With this specific hand position (mudrā), known as raigō-in, Amida Buddha is leading and welcoming his faithful believers to his realm, Sukhāvatī (also known as Western Paradise or Pure Land), where they will be reborn in a pond of lotus flowers.