2013
In the naïve style Oscar Oiwa has incorporated in an undulating neo-impressionist landscape seven characters with diverse cultural backgrounds, who unite in a planetary jam. The whole world pays musical homage to Funky Claude, who died that year. Oscar Oiwa, an international artist of Japanese origin, born in Brazil and active in New York, is an example of the multiculturalism that Claude Nobs and the festival have defended for 47 years. The late director and his successor Mathieu Jaton had heard about Oiwa’s work at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Kawasaki, Japan. They had been moved by this work of pop and colourful art, which also displays strong ecological concerns. In the same vein as the cartoon Princess Mononoke, Oscar Oiwa imagines in his painting an animistic natural world that can take its revenge on attempts at human domination.
