Kei Sato

Kei Sato was an abstract painter who painted mainly in gouache and mixed techniques. He took an early interest in art despite his father’s urging to become a lawyer. After attending Kawabata Painting School in Tokyo, Sato studied at the Western Painting Department of School of Fine Arts beginning in 1926. In the following years he took part successfully in the Emperor and the Dai Nibu-kai Exhibitions. In 1930-34 he continued his studies at the Académie Calarossi in Paris, where he was soon accepted for the Salon d’Automne. In 1936 he was one of the founders of the Shinseisaku-ha-kyôkai (New Creation Group). He was married to singer Yoshiko Sato, but she chose to stay in Japan while he lived in Paris. During World War II, he joined the military news department, with Inokuma Genichiro, to record battles in paintings. In 1944, he was evacuated to Tsukui in Kanagawa prefecture together with several other artists.

In 1952 Sato moved permanently to Paris and visited his home country only sporadically thereafter. His wife was the famous opera singer Yoshiko Sato (1903-1982), but he separated from her because she refused to accompany him to Paris. While living there, Sato also turned from a concrete to an abstract style of painting. He was in the second wave of Japanese artists painting in lyric abstraction. Sato travelled frequently to Greece, Italy, North Africa, Great Britain, and the USA. He exhibited world-wide, for instance, in 1958 at the 30th Biennale in Venice and in the following year at the 6th Japanese International Art Exhibition. Sato died at his home in Beppu from acute heart failure.

In February 1949, Asahi Weekly published a graphic by Kei Sato on its cover depicting a skier. It cannot be proven whether this was his 1936 entry, however, which was a graphic, after all.