Reprint of Toshio Saeki's popular 2016 book Rêve écarlate (Scarlet Dream). Bright, colorful illustrations of his erotic grotesque artwork found in magazines like SM Select.
A living god and underground icon in Japan, Toshio Saeki is the inventor of a unique style in a genre he completely transformed: ero-guro (literally: erotic-grotesque scenes). This genre traces back to the roots of classical Japanese drawing and has inspired numerous prints throughout the centuries. But Saeki, by reworking traditional motifs, infused them with the anxieties of his own generation—one that experienced both the hopes and disillusionments of the 1970s. The modern world—its violence and flaws—creeps into these timeless scenes, generating never-before-seen monsters and fantasies that had previously been unimaginable. Stimulated by the strict censorship in Japan—where depicting genitalia is prohibited—Saeki turned prohibition into artistic constraint, pushing the world’s oldest subject into realms of absurdity and dreamlike imagery. His unique style, which many Europeans compare to Hergé and Joost Swarte’s famous “ligne claire,” feels uncanny to both Japanese and Western audiences, each finding a fresh form of exoticism in his perfectly simple lines.
