Hiroshi Sugito

Hiroshi Sugito’s unconventional path began with years spent as a woodsman cultivating fields in the mountains, before turning to painting in 1996. He studied in the Department of Japanese Painting at Aichi Prefectural University of Arts under Yoshitomo Nara, where his training in Nihonga shaped his techniques with mineral pigments and stressed the conceptual rigor of his approach. Nara later invited him to participate in the seminal group show Over the Rainbow in 1997. Sugito’s paintings draw from Nihonga traditions while absorbing influences from both Eastern and Western painting. Recurring motifs such as trees, houses, boats, and smoke appear alongside geometric forms, rendered in delicate, rhythmically placed colors with a paradoxically hazy, aquatic transparency. Painted with a light touch, his compositions suggest a world in play, a world between the quotidian and the poetic. Since the 1990s, he has exhibited extensively in Japan and internationally. He is currently Professor of Painting at Tokyo University of the Arts.

 Hiroshi Sugito (b. 1970, Nagoya, Japan) lives and works in Tokyo.  

Recent solo exhibitions include slicing apples, Mendes Wood DM, New York (2025); flyleaf and liner, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori (2025); candy wrap, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo (2025); apples and lemon, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2024); Remainder, Lulu, Mexico City (2023); Hiroshi Sugito: Shifting Atmospheres, Semiose, Paris (2022); Hiroshi Sugito: the garden with Zenzaburo Kojima, Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles (2022); apples and triangles, Gana Art, Seoul (2020); Hiroshi Sugito: module or lacuna, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo (2017); and particles and release, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi (2016). 

Recent and notable group exhibitions include MOT Collection 30th Anniversary Exhibit, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2025); Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, 1990–2025, Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Chiba (2025); MINEBANE! Contemporary Art – The Taguchi Art Collection, Akita Museum of Art and Akita Senshu Museum of Art, Akita (2025); How Did You Come into the World?, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori (2024); Does the Future Sleep Here?, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (2024); Perfect Camouflage, Watarium Art Museum, Tokyo (2024); Roppongi Crossing 2019: Connexions, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Japanorama. New vision on art since 1970, Centre Pompidou-Metz (2017); Logical Emotion – Contemporary Art from Japan, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2014); Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Krakow (2015); Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle, Halle (2015); Garden of painting – Japanese Art of the 00s, National Museum of Art, Osaka (2010); and Winter Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2009); Painting at the Edge of the World, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001); among others.

Sugito’s works are held in permanent collections at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Saatchi Collection, London; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and Taguchi Art Collection, Japan.