Designed in partnership with the Edgar P. Jacobs Foundation, this exhibition explores the links between Blake's universe and Mortimer's collections. Original planks, layers, preparatory sketches, unpublished archives and Japanese prints dialogue around the same medium: paper, common material of comic strip as print.

Located in Japan of the 1970s, the plot of3 Forms of Professor Satōplays Philip Mortimer at the heart of an adventure mixing espionage, robotics and scientific innovations. Fascated by Japan without ever having visited it, Edgar P. Jacobs relies on exceptional documentation to recreate with remarkable precision landscapes, architecture, everyday objects and traditions. His eyes question both the reality and the imagination of a country where technological modernity and cultural heritage coexist harmoniously.

The exhibition reveals the backstage of this creation. Visitors discover the meticulous working method of Jacobs, his taste of detail, the importance of his documentary research and the various stages that give rise to a comics board. A selection of prints, works of art and Japanese objects highlights the visual resonance between the work of the artist and the great masters of the print: composition, shadow and light games, theatricality, color and sense of the story.

Over the course, Jacobs' fascination for Japan is also revealed through the many documents he has gathered over the years, as well as the objects that nourished his imagination. The exhibition shows how this documentation helped shape a work where science fiction dialogues with Japanese traditions, between spirituality, innovation and the quest for humanity.

Presented in two successive rotations to preserve the most fragile works, the exhibition renews part of its journey from the3 November 2026, thus offering a new selection of originals to be discovered.

Reunite near160 original works, unpublished archives of the Edgar P. Jacobs Foundation, prints from the museum collections as well as a spectacular robot-samourai designed especially for the occasion,Mortimer and Japan paper proposes an unpublished immersion in the universe of the master of the clear line and in Japan that fed his imagination.

Programme · Asian Arts Museum

Mortimer and Japan paper