Masando Kito Art for Sale and Sold Prices

b. 1937 -

Masando Kito was once an artist with the Kodo Bijutsu (Action Arts) Association, founded in 1945 by nine members, including Junkichi Mukai and Takuji Koide. In 1950, a sculpture branch of the association was formed by Kakuzo Tatehata and others. Though today many ambitious painters and sculptors work independently, until the 1960’s in Japan, it was most common to be associated with a collective and to regularly contribute works to the group’s exhibitions. This period could be called the golden age of group exhibitions.

Born in Nagoya in 1937, Kito started painting monochrome works in yellow ochre, amber and black after making it into his high school’s painting curriculum. He explains that this was because in poor postwar Japan, paints were expensive to buy. At the young age of 16, Kito submitted work to Kodo Bijutsu. He used subdued color to depict warehouses and other scenes on city blocks. After entering Musashino Art School, Kito received an artist’s subsidy from Kodo Bijutsu at just 19 years of age. A young prodigy, he soon held a solo exhibiion at Muramatsu Gallery.

This was the era of abstract painters, such as Tatsuoki Nanbada, Kokuta Suda, and Tadashi Sugimata. In view of their art’s surfaces and structures, Kito’s use of subdued coloring and materials to make pure abstract art is easier to understand. In addition, the abstractions of his thickly layered prints that evoke Japanese cultural traditions also bring to mind the works of artists active in the 1950’s and 1960’s such as Kumi Sugai, Toshimitsu Imai, and Hisao Domoto; Kito can be said to embody the unique modern japonisme shown by Japanese artists active abroad such as Kenzo Okada and Genichiro Inokuma.

On a technical level, black prints are created by layering black on top of monochrome painted bases in yellow ochre o other colors. Compared with applying black directly on top of a gesso base, this creates a slightly more subdued color field. Kito adds uneen textures atop of this. In some cases, he uses a collage beneath the color layer or has the paint protrude up from the surface. Thus, monochromes with uneven textures are created.

We can call this style “Kito Black”. Interestingly, Kito once held a two-person exhibition with Soichiro Tomioka. Tomioka, born in the snow country of the Takada Domain in the old Echigo Province (present-day Niigata Prefecture), uses the white oil paint he developed called “Tomioka White”, creating consistent depictions of the snowy landscapes in whites that have a flatness, smoothness, and brightness to them. Kito, with his subdued black abstract paintings, and Tomioka, with his clear white representational paintings, make a marked contast, yet the way in which their styles reflet the environments they grew up in is similar.

Kito travelled to the United States in 1964 and held a solo exhibition at the Tria