SHIGERU SAITO

Both in 2000 and 2002, he was invited to the International Sculpture Exhibition of KAJIMA, in Tokyo, receiving awards in both editions.

In the same years, he met Kunio Kondo, sculptor and professor of Traditional Japanese Architecture, a very close friend of Enrico Castellani, who introduced Saito to the artworks of the master. Saito is mesmerised by Castellani’s relief surfaces, from which he draws inspiration for his geometric works.

From this moment on, he established a double bond with Italy, Castellani’s homeland and a country of research about materials, that Saito studies with unvaried passion and self-denial.

Marble, wood, metals: Saito’s ability to bend those materials to his plastic wills is peculiar, as an artist who realises artworks oscillating between compositional minimalism and trigonometric virtuosity, from which harmonic structures originate.

From 2005 to 2007 he was nominated Delegate of the Cultural Japanese Ministry in Italy to carry out artistic researches.

In 2006, he exhibited at the XIII Biennale Internazionale del Museo di Scultura di Carrara. In 2013, he participated at the Infinito Riflesso exhibition, at CAMUSAC, Cassino, where his works dialogued with those of Enrico Castellani.

Several sculptural commissions were requested to Saito in the last 15 years, both from Japan and Italy: his last intervention has been required from Florence municipality in order to realise a sculpture for the city’s Courthouse.