Rêve écarlate

• Toshio Saeki• Collection Pierre Cornelius Editions  A living god and underground icon in Japan, Toshio Saeki is the creator of a unique style in a genre he completely transformed: ero-guro (short for “erotic grotesque”). This genre, rooted in the origins of classical Japanese illustration, has inspired countless prints over the centuries. But Saeki reimagined traditional motifs by infusing them with the anxieties of his own generation—one shaped by the hopes and disillusionments of the 1970s. Modern life—its violence, flaws, and madness—seeps into timeless scenes, giving rise to never-before-seen monsters and fantasies beyond imagination. Faced with Japan’s strict censorship laws (depicting genitals is prohibited), Saeki turned constraint into creativity, shifting the oldest theme in the world—sex—toward the absurd and the dreamlike. His unmistakable style, often likened by European readers to the iconic ligne claire of Hergé or Joost Swarte, appears equally strange to both Japanese