Kikuo Saito, Owl’s Boat, 1981
Main reasons to invest
Return Potential📈: An investment of 500 EUR is projected to be worth approximately 1,450 EUR in 5 years.
Cost-to-Return Ratio⚖️: With just 2.8% annual total costs (including exit fees), your net profit could be an impressive 23.7% per year.
Auction market🔨 : His work has been auctioned multiple times, with prices showing a steady progression since 2021, increasing by 102% over the last three years. Until 2023, Saito auction sales were limited to minor houses. The recent entrance of major players such as Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips into the market bodes well for added auction liquidity and further price growth.
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Description
Who is Kikuo Saito?
Kikuo Saito (1939-2016) was a Japanese American abstract painter with ties to the Color Field movement. Born in Tokyo, he came to New York in 1966, where he worked as an assistant for such eminent painters as Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Larry Poons, a move that would mark the beginning of his transformative artistic journey.
A Painter's Journey
Saito was lauded as a well-rounded artist. Much has been said about his theater work with Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, Ellen Stuart, Jerome Robbins, and others, but Saito was, in fact, the eternal painter. The renowned critic and curator of Color Field painting, Karen Wilkin, wrote: “Even before he completely abandoned theater projects, he increasingly concentrated on painting, developing a personal version of Color Field abstraction. Saito’s mature work is characterized by inventive, often surprising color, which ranges from frankly gorgeous, richly varied intensities to subdued near monochromes, as well as by eloquent drawing…”
Evolution of Color Field
Saito the Color Field painter, who, in the beginning, resonated in the footsteps of Frankenthaler, quickly climbed the ladder to painting of his own, in fact, beyond Frankenthaler’s flows of paint. Like Basquiat, who moved abstract expressionist painting forward to include figurative and conceptual content, Saito moved Color Field to a new level structured with content and moods, peppered with objects, clouds, and Roman letters.
Recognition and Acclaim
Memories or echoes of movement become autonomous sweeps across the canvas, fraying into scribbles and tatters…sensuous tangles and swipes all-but divorced from reference”, writes Wilkin. In the past few years, Saito’s original take on Color Field and the beauty of the works have been increasingly acknowledged by collectors, critics, dealers and institutions.
Saito’s work can be found in the collections of major museums and has been the subject of multiple solo exhibitions.
Limited Supply and Growing Interest
Following Saito's passing in 2016, there has been no new output of art, resulting in a finite supply of his works. Despite this limitation, interest in Saito's art continues to grow, particularly with the recent entrance of major auction houses such as Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips into the market. This influx of interest promises to enhance auction liquidity and drive further appreciation in Saito's prices.
Museum Collections:
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York Whitney Museum of Art, New York, New York The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Queens University, Ontario, Canada Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Solo Ausstellungen
2024 James Fuentes Gallery, New York, NY: Kikuo Saito: Color Codes,(Ongoing
2024 KinoSaito, Verplanck, NY: Kikuo Saito: Unraveling, (Ongoing
2023 KinoSaito, Verplanck, NY: Kikuo Saito: Pictorial Clay
2022 KinoSaito, Verplanck, NY: Kikuo Saito: Hatching Color
2022 Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich: Kikuo Saito
2022 KinoSaito, Verplanck, NY: Kikuo Saito: The Alphabet Paintings
2022 Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, CA: Ouray
2021 Art Dealers Association of America, James Fuentes Gallery, New York, NY: Kikuo Saito
2021 KinoSaito, Verplanck, NY: Painting as Performance / Performance as Painting
2021 KinoSaito, Verplanck, NY: Kikuo Saito: Cloud Paintings
2021 James Fuentes Gallery, New York, NY: Kikuo Saito
2019 Loretta Howard, New York, NY: Kikuo Saito: To Paint with Drawing
2019 Lori Bookstein Projects, New York, NY: Lyrical Abstraction: Small Scale
2018 Lori Bookstein Projects, New York, NY: Saito: Works on Paper
2018 Loretta Howard, New York, NY: Kikuo Saito: Resonant Tension
2018 Octavia Art Gallery, Houston, TX: 40 Years
2018 Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA: Never Before Seen Paintings from the Estate
Expert
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