K atsushika Hokusai —1760* 1849† | was a restless spirit and a lifelong seeker. Few artists reinvented themselves as often as he did – he used over thirty artist names throughout his life, each a sign of an inner transformation. For Hokusai, stagnation was synonymous with death. Born in Edo (present-day Tokyo), he dedicated himself early to the world of ukiyo-e – the “floating world.” Yet, where many of his contemporaries captured the fleeting and enjoyable, Hokusai sought structure, rhythm, and regularity. For him, lines were not an ornament, but knowledge. He studied movement, nature, anatomy, perspective – with an almost scientific obsession. He became famous primarily for “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” an image that had an impact far beyond Japan and influenced generations of Western artists. But for Hokusai himself, this was just an intermediate step. In a late text, he wrote that he only began to understand the true form of things at seventy – and hoped to finally be a truly great artist at one hundred. His work radiates both humility and megalomania: humility before nature, time, and craftsmanship – and the absolute will to make the invisible visible. Hokusai died poor but left a legacy of over 30,000 works. Lines that live on to this day.