Sato Satoru

The work

Construction and Conception
1992
200 x 145 cm
Acrylic on canvas and wood

“Construction and Conception” is a representative work of the work Sato produced from 1976 onwards: relief paintings with the canvas surrounded by a rectangular, vertical wooden structure, in which he incorporated geometric pieces of the same material arranged symmetrically.

The artist

(Miyagi, Japó, 1945)

“From the moment man abandons the direct copy of nature and creates an image in his own way—that is, from the moment he projects the idea of ​​something previously nonexistent—a certain construction begins”.
“If, in addition, these images are arranged, attempting to relate them rhythmically… a greater degree of construction is achieved.
“Construction must be the creation of order… The structure or construction ceases to be a simple scaffolding for arranging forms, taking their place and constituting the work itself”.
This is how Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres García explained constructivism in 1930 in an article in the magazine Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square), which he had founded with Michel Seuphor, a Belgian artist based in Paris. The friendship of a young Japanese artist, Sato, with Seuphor, who was already over 70, led him to discover the constructivism that he would never abandon.
In 1979, Satoru Sato developed a new line of thought around the notion of verticalism. His use of raw materials, such as bare canvas or wood (and, for a brief period in the early 1980s, metal), treated with a reduced palette, and his design of intermediate constructions, halfway between painting and relief, led him to large-format sculpture and to a reflection on the integration of art.Construction and Conception is a representative work of the work Sato produced from 1976 onwards: relief paintings with the canvas surrounded by a rectangular, vertical wooden structure, in which he incorporated geometric pieces of the same material arranged symmetrically.