斎藤義重

Saitō Yoshishige, the son of an army officer Saitō Nagayoshi[?] and his wife Sakiko, was born in 1904 in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, where his father was stationed at the time. Yoshishige spent his childhood in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, but moved to Tokyo at the age of seven following his father’s reassignment. At Nihon Chūgakkō (present-day Nihon Gakuen), he joined the school’s art club and took up painting, although an interest in foreign literature, especially the works of Dostoevsky and Chekhov, initially led him to think of pursuing a literary career. Then came the shock of seeing, in 1920, the “First Exhibition of Russian Painting in Japan” held at the Hoshi Pharmaceutical building in Tokyo’s Kyōbashi, featuring works by the Russian Futurists David Burliuk and Victor Palmov. Other new European art trends, such as Russian Constructivism and Dadaism, as well as the activities of the Mavo group formed in 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi and others, deepened his interest in avant-garde art. His early experiments with three-dimensional expression included a relief work that he submitted, unsuccessfully, to the Nika Exhibition. In 1933, he joined the Avangarudo Yōga Kenkyūjo (Avant-Garde Western-Style Painting Institute) founded by Abe Kongō, Koga Harue, Minegishi Giichi, and Tōgō Seiji, where he associated with Katsura Yukiko and Kim Whanki. His first successful submissions to the annual Nika event were “Shuttatsu” 出立 (Departure) and “Abusutorakuto” アブストラクト (Abstract) (both whereabouts unknown), accepted for the 23rd Exhibition in 1936. Two years later, he formed the group Zettaishōha Kyōkai with young artists including Yamamoto Keisuke and Takahashi Michiaki. He also participated in the Kyūshitsukai (Nine Room Society), formed by avant-garde artists of the Nika Association, and exhibited his distinctive plywood relief works at its first exhibition the following year and again at the first Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai (Art and Culture Association) Exhibition. During the Second World War, Saitō vacated the art scene and took work as a magazine editor. When his apartment building in Takinogawa, Tokyo, was burnt down in an air raid, he lost the works he had produced, along with all his personal effects. After the war, he met Ōtsuji Kiyoji, a photographer recently demobilized, and moved into his house and studio in Shinjuku. At the first Modern Art Exhibition in 1948, he exhibited “Ahondarame” あほんだらめ (Airhead!), created in Ōtsuji’s studio, in which abstract comical figures express the social absurdities he had observed during the war. In 1954, due to poverty and a mystery illness, he was forced once more to give up practicing art and retreated to Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, to recuperate. Around this period, he associated with members of the Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop), who included Ōtsuji, Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, Takiguchi Shūzō, and Fukushima Hideko. As his health improved, he resumed work and in 1956 produced “Gyoson” 漁村 (Fishing Village) (The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama) based on sketches he made at a fishing port in Urayasu. The following year, his “Oni” 鬼 (Demon) (1957, The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama) won the “Mr. K” Prize at the 4th Nihon Kokusai Bijutsuten (Japan International Art Exhibition). The same year, he was awarded the New Artist’s Prize at the “Kon’nichi no Shinjin 57-nen Ten” (Present-Day Promising Artists Exhibition 1957), which catapulted him into the limelight. In 1958, through an introduction from Takiguchi Shūzō, he held his first one-man exhibition at the Tokyo Gallery. Another 12 solo exhibitions would be mounted at this gallery between now and the year of his death. Saitō’s works frequently appeared at international exhibitions, including the 5th São Paulo Art Biennial in 1959 and the 30th Venice Biennale the following year. The Honorable Mention he received at the Guggenheim International Award 1960 brought wider international recognition. While attending the Venice Biennale, he took the opportunity to visit Lucio Fontana’s studio in Milan, an experience that led him to undertake a deeper interrogation of the inherent flatness of a painting. On returning to Japan, he began to carve lines, dots, and circles on wooden panels with an electric drill, in addition to using a paintbrush. The pictorial object thus created, which he restricted to the basic colors of red, white, blue, and black, achieved a unique rhythm and sense of movement due to the combination of the artist’s deliberate and the drill’s accidental actions. From 1964, he adapted this approach to a method of expression he had employed before the war, by drilling holes into reliefs made with plywood, examples being “Sakuhin 2” 作品2 (Work 2 [V-2]) (1964, Fukuoka City Museum) and “Sakuhin 4” 作品4 (Work 4) (1964, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). In the latter half of the 1960s, he began to incorporate moving parts into his works, as seen in the series “Penchi” ペンチ (Pliers) (1967, The Miyagi Museum of Art, etc.) and “Kurēn” クレーン (Crane) (1967, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, etc.). For the several retrospectives held at the Tokyo Gallery in 1973, he recreated a series of plywood relief works made before the war but destroyed in air raids; each of them, referred to as “Sakuhin” 作品 (Work) when initially presented, was now retitled “Toro-uddo” トロウッド (Toro-wood) (Yokohama Museum of Art, etc.). In the 1970s, Saitō focused on three-dimensional works combining pieces of plain wood. Then, during the 1980s, in the series “Yottsu no Ichi” 4つの位置 (Four Positions) and “Han Taishō” 反対称 (Dissymmetry), he explored the equilibrium in the relationship of projection and recess. He was also by now working on a larger scale: in transcending the boundaries between the two- and three-dimensional, the “Fukugōtai” 複合体 (Complex) series begun in 1983 attained a fluid relationship with the surrounding space. For this series, the artist used pieces of wood all painted black, shunning the lyricism of color. In the latter half of the 1990s, his projects evolved into installations that, in addition to the spatial aspect, incorporated a temporal one. He continued to be active right up to the end of his life—exhibiting, for instance, at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in 2000. On June 13, 2001 he passed away at the age of 97. Saitō, in his art, was constantly questioning matter and its physical presence. He was also a driving force in his profession, both as a pioneer in the contemporary art scene of postwar Japan and an educator who inspired the next generation of artists as a professor at the Tama Art University and also by teaching at the “B Zemi” (B Seminar), the Tokyo School of Arts (TSA), and elsewhere. In particular, he was a major influence on artists of the Mono-ha (School of Things) from the late 1960s to the 1970s, including Sekine Nobuo, Yoshida Katsurō, Narita Katsuhiko, Koshimizu Susumu, and Suga Kishio. On the occasion of Saitō’s one-man exhibition at the Nizayama Forest Art Museum in Toyama in 1998, the critic Nakahara Yūsuke suggested rendering the artist’s given name, based on its “on’yomi” (“Chinese”) reading, as “Ghiju” (hence the exhibition title “SAITOH Ghiju”). His last solo exhibition, held in 1999 at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, was similarly entitled “SAITOH Ghiju,” and his new work “14 to” carried the signature “G. Saitoh.” In 2002, about 3,000 items associated with the artist, including letters, notebooks, and photographs, were donated by his family to the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama. They are made available for public viewing as the Ghiju Saito Archives. (Nagato Saki / Translated by Ota So & Walter Hamilton) ( Published online: 2025-03-11)