Kikuo Saito Prints and Multiples

Artist: Kikuo Saito, Japanese (1939 - 2016) Title: Onion Train Year: 1979 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 225 Size: 42 x 29.5 inches [106.68 x 74.93 cm]

Kikuo Saito (1939 – 2016) was a Japanese-born American abstract painter with ties to the Color Field movement and Lyrical abstraction. A former assistant to Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Larry Poons, Saito's work infuses richly saturated colorscapes with delicately drawn lines. Saito was the creator of sui generis theatre and dance events, collaborating with innovative directors and choreographers Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, Jerome Robbins, and dancer and choreographer Eva Maier, to whom he was married for several decades. His productions combined wordless drama in the poetic frameworks of light, costumes, music, and dance, most of which he devised and directed himself. Kikuo Saito was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1939. He began painting when he was 17 years old, and worked for 3 years as a proctor and studio technician at the workshop of Sensei Itoh, an established Japanese painter. During this time, Saito gained an understanding of both the traditional arts of Japan as well as contemporary movements such as the Gutai Group. He also had an interest in the burgeoning New York City art world and movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Color Field, and Pop Art. Saito moved to New York in 1966 at the age of 27. The journey across the United States to New York provided him a chance meeting with Ellen Stewart, founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, who he would later describe as his American mother. Once in New York, Saito worked with Stewart at La MaMa and was instrumental in bringing Japanese avant-garde dramatist Shuji Terayama...

Artist: Kikuo Saito, Japanese (1939 - 2016) Title: Kurara Year: 1979 Medium: Silkscreen, Signed and numbered in Pencil Edition: 160 Size: 42 x 29.5 inches (106.68 x 74.93 cm)

Artist: Kikuo Saito, Japanese (1939 - 2016) Title: Kurara Year: 1979 Medium: Silkscreen, Signed and numbered in Pencil Edition: 160 Size: 42 x 29.5 inches (106.68 x 74.93 cm)