[4]: 18 Despite his family's history of working in Japanese-style media, in April 1929, he enrolled in the oil painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he studied under Takeji Fujishima.
The notable Japanese critic Atsuo Imaizumi acclaimed Kawabata as "the first full-fledged international modern artist" produced by Japan.
[1] In September 1958, Kawabata moved to the US and settled in New York, and the following month his Rhythm Brown (1958) received Honorable Mention at the 2nd Guggenheim International Award.
[9] Kawabata held his first New York solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1960, forming an association which has continued ever since, with almost yearly exhibitions of his work.
[3]: 4 At the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962, Kawabata exhibited his works at the Japan Pavilion (commissioner: Atsuo Imaizumi) alongside that of four other artists (Kinuko Emi, Kumi Sugai, Tadashi Sugimata, and Ryōkichi Mukai).
[10] At the Venice Biennale, Kawabata exhibited eight works, including Vivid Red (1961), which is characterised by calligraphic brushwork and intense colours.
[1] Through the 1970s, Kawabata pursued abstraction, in which colour fields overlap in clear and simplified forms, such as diamonds, ellipses and origami-like shapes.
[11]: 126 The exhibition catalogue of his retrospective, held at the Everson Museum of Art in New York in 1974, interpreted: "Kawabata has consistently sought and won a powerfully individual mode of expression with lyrical color forms in space.