Like his peers On Kawara, Yoko Ono, Genpei Akasegawa and Shusaku Arakawa, his experiences with wartime Japan shaped him as an artist and led him to rejecting the status quo.
[4] Shortly thereafter, he considered going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study with the designer and painter György Kepes but declined the invitation.
Instead, in summer 1956, he moved to New York on a Japan Society fellowship, where he studied religion, philosophy and art history at Columbia University.
"[9] He believed the voice was instructing him to employ language in his art, so he subsequently began creating artwork solely from text.
This marked the beginning of his body of work concerning the concept of "kannen", which means "idea" (as in metaphysics and "meditative visualization" in Pure Land Buddhism).
He offered an alternative to European and North American conceptualism ideas of dematerialization, a redefining of the art object and its meaning.
There, Matsuzawa exhibited alongside fellow conceptual artists Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Michio Horikawa, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Mario Merz and Jiro Takamatsu.
Within the same year as Tokyo Biennale 1970, Matsuzawa met Adriaan van Ravesteijn, the director of the Art & Project gallery in Amsterdam.