Kikuo Saito

James Fuentes Gallery is thrilled to present Kikuo Saito: Alphabet Paintings . Born in Tokyo, Kikuo Saito (1939–2016) moved to New York in 1966 and developed a singular body of abstract work in both visual art and theater. This exhibition offers a comprehensive introduction to the Alphabet Paintings, a major series produced by Saito from the 1990s to the 2010s, standing at the center of his investigation of color, form, and vision. Before leaving Tokyo, Saito spent three years in the studio of traditional painter Kiyonaga Ito, while admiring the experiments of the Gutai group. In New York he worked as a studio assistant to central figures in Color Field painting, the vital postwar American movement that poured and spread saturated expanses of pigment across canvases.