The Great Wave off Kanagawa, wide version

Few images in the world are as instantly recognizable as this one. Created around 1831 by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" is a woodblock print, which means it was carved into wood, inked, and pressed onto paper, allowing many copies to be made. A towering wave curls over three small boats, its foamy claws reaching toward the sky. If you look closely past the chaos, you will spot Mount Fuji sitting calmly in the distance, almost lost beneath the wave's enormous crest.

This print belongs to a series called "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji," and Hokusai was already in his seventies when he made it. The deep blue that gives the wave its drama came from a then-new imported pigment called Prussian blue, which was popular in Japan at the time. Part of the ukiyo-e tradition, meaning "pictures of the floating world," the work captures a fleeting moment of nature's power against human fragility. It went on to inspire artists and musicians far beyond Japan, including Claude Monet and the composer Claude Debussy, proving that a small piece of inked paper can leave a very big wave behind.