Clay Image

Though influenced by the work of Koshiro Onchi, Saito never committed to full abstraction, preferring the forms he found in nature. Steady Gaze, alternately titled Staring, won an award at the First Biennial Exhibition in São Paulo in 1951, much to the surprise of the Japanese art world expecting oil paintings to take precedence. It was also ironic in view of the artist’s own attitude toward his graphic work: “I . . . feel that I am fundamentally an oil painter. For me, the joy of making a print is not in working with the materials but in creating the design. After all, with each stroke of the brush I improve as an artist, but with each cut of the chisel I improve only as an artisan.”In the early 1950s Saito began a series of images of the ancient haniwa burial figures, which he claimed have “a beauty like nudes.” Using a restrained palette of red, black, gray, and white, these totemic figures achieve in the artist’s hands an eerie contemporary feel that contradicts their ancient origins. (“JapanAmerica: Points of Contact, 1876–1970,” curated by Nancy E. Green and presented at the Johnson Museum August 27–December 18, 2016)