Kikuo Saito

About

Kikuo Saito (1939–2016) was born in Tokyo and moved to New York City in 1966 at the age of 26, curious about the city’s burgeoning artistic movements. Saito had began painting a decade prior, building a steady understanding of traditional Japanese arts alongside contemporary movements such as the Gutai Group, while working for three years in the studio of established traditional painter Sensei Itoh. Landing in San Francisco, Saito traveled to New York by bus, visiting the country’s museums and witnessing its variable and remarkable landscape, confronted by the city’s own topography of signs upon arrival.