Yoshitomo Saito      Works  |  Bio

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Japanese, b. 1958
Lives and works in Denver, CO

At a time when little continues to be made by hand, sculptor Yoshitomo Saito’s work—hand-cast bronze objects produced in his own studio foundry— demonstrates a refreshing commitment to craftsmanship. Saito’s most recent bronze works range from freestanding sculptures to highly detailed wall-hung works. These sculptures were inspired, in part, by the avant-garde sensibility of French composer and pianist Erik Satie. Under Saito’s masterful hand, bronze appears a featherweight medium perfectly attuned to even the most fragile aspects of our ever-changing natural world. Throughout his practice, Saito has playfully reinterpreted organic shapes while refining and developing his technical expertise. As he has done for the last thirty years, Saito continues to defy expectations of his chosen material, celebrating the medium’s ability to appear fresh, clean and contemporary. 

Born in Japan, Saito began his artistic practice as a glassblower. While a graduate student at the California College of Arts, he began to work with bronze, a material that has sustained his interest since. The artist is trained in a labor-intensive technique known as lost-wax casting, in which the wax mold is “lost” or destroyed during the casting process. Saito produces extraordinarily detailed bronzes that often reference the most fragile parts of our natural landscape, such as twigs and branches, pine cones and bark, which he combines into striking wall-hung installations and sculptures. 

Saito received his BA from Jiyugakuen College in Tokyo, Japan, and MFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. His work has been exhibited in group and solo shows at institutions including the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA; The Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; Oakland Museum of California, CA; Berkeley Art Center, CA; DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI; and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and Denver Botanic Gardens. Institutions collecting his work include the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Honolulu, HI; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; California College of the Arts, Oakland/San Francisco, CA; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, CO; and Oakland Museum of California, CA.