斎藤義重 Yoshishige
Saito Yoshishige
Saito

Yoshishige Saito was born at the cusp of the Meiji (1868–1912) and Taisho (1912–26) periods, two of the eras in early twentieth century Japan that marked the conclusion of the first phase of the country’s fervent Westernization and industrialization and the beginning of its embrace of modernity. Already as a teenager, Saito showed a great interest in art, particularly painting, and was exposed to a wide range of experimental visual and performing arts, literature, and film.
His encounter with Japan’s early avant-garde movement MAVO in 1923 was the first turning point in his formative years. Led by Tomoyoshi Murayama (1901–1977) who recently returned from Weimer Germany, MAVO proposed an explosive alternative to the tame academicism of Japanese modern art of the time. Their activities included the incorporation of everyday materials into art, experimental theater and happenings, as well as socially engaged design and architecture projects, all of which set a precedent for the postwar blossoming of the Anti-Art movement from the late 1950s. Saito was awe-struck by Murayama’s uninhibited creative imagination and from the mid-1920s to around 1930 he nearly abandoned his practice in painting, spending much of his time on critical writing.
During the 1930s, inspired by Russian Constructivism, Saito resumed his work as an artist, producing plywood- based relief paintings and sculptures whose geometric quality proved consistently important to the artist as it resurfaced repeatedly in his postwar creations like Work 3, 1964. However, in the decade imminently facing the start of World War II, Saito’s unconventional three-dimensional works using plywood, strings, and plastic placed him against the conservatism of officially administrated exhibitions. Rather than compromising under the circumstances, the challenge only encouraged him to embark on a life-long search for the expression that lies between the realm of painting and sculpture.
Similar to his friend and contemporary Jiro Yoshihara (1905–1972), who founded the Gutai Art Association to lead a new generation of avant-garde artists in the postwar years, Saito, a Professor of Fine Art at Tama Art College, greatly influenced a new generation of artists during the 1960s who later formed the Japanese conceptual art movement Mono-ha (School of Things). At the same time, Saito attained critical acclaim with his series of plywood-based works of the late 1950s to the 1960s.