Kikuo Saito (1939-2016)

Kikuo Saito was born in Tokyo in 1939, where he lived until young adulthood. At 22, while still in Japan, he apprenticed under a master painter, while remaining cognizant of the many new art movements emerging not only in Japan, but also across Europe and the United States. After a brief period working in lighting and stage design, Saito moved to New York in 1966 - a time when radical thinking and new modes of expression in both painting and performance had introduced an era of bold experimentation in the arts. In New York, he explored the free, expressive pouring and dragging of paint across canvas - techniques that would come to be associated with the Color Field movement. As Saito navigated the nascent waters of the Color Field and Abstract Expressionist schools, he soon found a vocabulary of his own in compositions of gestural brushstrokes, cryptic signs, letter forms, loose geometric shapes, and washes of color.

In those early New York years, Saito found a home at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club where he designed sets, costumes, lighting, and props, while developing theater productions that blended qualities of the Japanese avant-garde with his own aesthetic. He went on to work with noted theater directors Robert Wilson and Jerome Robbins on productions both domestic and abroad. He took painting classes at the Art Students League, where he would later teach, and encountered the work of many of the era’s innovators. Soon he was working as a studio assistant for what would become some of the most prominent names to emerge from that era of American painting: Larry Poons, Kenneth Noland, and Helen Frankenthaler.

For many years, he worked back and forth between theater and painting. Eventually, he turned solely to his studio practice, devoting all of his time to a career with momentum that continues to grow even to this day.

Saito exhibited extensively over the decades, with his work having featured prominently in numerous solo and group shows worldwide. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Aldrich Museum, and numerous private and corporate collections. Even to this day, Saito’s work continues to be shown by many of the leading post-war and contemporary galleries in the United States.

Source: KinoSaito