Yoshishige Saito1904~2001 斎藤義重

SAITO Yoshishige (1904-2001) was a leading Japanese contemporary artist born in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture. Influenced by Russian Futurism in the 1920s, he joined the Avant-garde Western Painting Institute in 1933 and became active in Japan’s prewar avant-garde movement. After the war, he gained international recognition for his innovative reliefs using plywood panels with drilled holes and grooves, exhibiting at the Venice Biennale in 1960. As a professor at Tama Art University from 1964, he mentored artists such as Sekine Nobuo and Suga Kishio, who later became key figures of the Mono-ha movement. He is regarded as one of the most influential figures in postwar Japanese art.