[8] Around 1928, Saitō began to create three-dimensional works, fueled by a closer study of Russian constructivism and European Dada artists such as Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, and Kurt Schwitters.
He left in 1939 to join the newly founded Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai (Art and Culture Association) led by Surrealist painter Ichirō Fukuzawa which brought together around 40 avant-garde artists such as Nobuya Abe, Aimitsu, Saburō Asō, Iwami Furusawa, Noburu Kitawaki, and Tadashi Sugimata.
[12][13] In the context of the intensifying oppression of liberal, particularly Surrealist, artists by the militarist Japanese state, Saitō’s home was searched by the police in 1942.
[15] Shortly before the end of World War II, Saitō’s works, notebooks, and other documents were lost in a fire caused by an air raid.
Experiencing financial and family hardships as well as health problems, Saitō retreated to Urayasu in 1954, where he stayed until his move back to Tokyo in 1960.
They year 1957 marked Saitō’s breakthrough in the Japanese art world, with his works being included in and awarded prizes at major group exhibitions.
Saitō’s classes were known for the unconventional teaching methods he used to foster his students’ artistic autonomy (e.g. non-hierarchic group discussions and one-on-one communication) and to dismantle academic concepts.
During the 1930s Saitō transitioned from a geometric semi-figurative painting style towards a completely abstract visual language, which consisted in spatial arrangements of geometric forms that echoed approaches by European abstract artists such as Jean Arp, Hans Erni, Naum Gabo, Jean Hélion, Arthur Jackson, Fernand Léger, or Antoine Pevsner.
These works, later titled Toro-uddo (Toro-wood), engaged with Russian constructivism and European abstract art as well as ink rubbings from the Northern Wei dynasty,[31] and challenged characteristics of traditional painting such as expression, flatness, and illusion.
Saitō’s early works were lost in the fires caused by the air raids during World War II, but some of them were reconstructed by the artist in the mid-1960s.
In the immediate postwar years, Saitō created oil paintings on wood with geometrically abstracted and distorted human figures that bore the influence of Picasso’s Guernica.
Around 1956, the contours of the figurative elements dissolved and were replaced by geometric forms, which, after 1957, evolved to blurred blots and blushes of thinly but opaquely applied paint on undefined monochrome backgrounds.
[36] In 1964, Saitō resumed his prewar practice of making wooden reliefs with shaped plywood pieces and with cutouts that were painted in bright monochrome colors.
These framed arrangements of planks were reminiscent of wooden fences or barricades that barred the viewers’ gaze, thus opposing the Italian Renaissance’s idea of painting as open window.
In 1980, Saitō began to create assemblages of conjoined black painted wooden planks to explore the spaces emerging from constellations and emphasized the instability of their construction.
The first arrangements, e.g., the Disproportion (1980) and the Triangularly (1981) series, were placed against or mounted on the wall; however, increasingly, and with parts added, they became larger, more complex and reached into the exhibition space.
The assemblages often included arrangements, which, not unlike the geometric forms of Russian constructivists El Lissitzky’s Proun room, the counter-reliefs of Vladimir Tatlin’s, and Robert Morris’ beam installations from the 1960s, seemed to defy the laws of gravity.