Izumi Kato was born in Shimane, Japan, and graduated with a degree in painting from Musashino University in 1992. After working as a manual laborer while aspiring to become a musician, Kato began his career as a painter in earnest in the late 1990s. He is best known for his paintings of innocent, otherworldly figures, often depicted with large heads. Since the early 2000s, he has been showing sculptures created with a wide range of materials, including wood, soft vinyl, stone, cloth, plastic models, and, most recently, aluminum. For Untitled, his new piece commissioned by Sculpture Milwaukee, Kato cast large quarried stones in aluminum and arranged them in a totem-like form resembling a figure. Unlike traditional sculptors, whose creation is primarily rooted in monochromatic three-dimensional forms, Kato approaches his works in a painterly way, applying layers of color to add depth and detail. With their simple symbolic forms and strong colors, Kato’s enigmatic figures are associated with Paleolithic art, animism beliefs, and the directness and expression of early childhood creative discovery.
Izumi Kato was born in Shimane, Japan, and graduated with a degree in painting from Musashino University in 1992. After working as a manual laborer while aspiring to become a musician, Kato began his career as a painter in earnest in the late 1990s. He is best known for his paintings of innocent, otherworldly figures, often depicted with large heads. Since the early 2000s, he has been showing sculptures created with a wide range of materials, including wood, soft vinyl, stone, cloth, plastic models, and, most recently, aluminum. For Untitled, his new piece commissioned by Sculpture Milwaukee, Kato cast large quarried stones in aluminum and arranged them in a totem-like form resembling a figure. Unlike traditional sculptors, whose creation is primarily rooted in monochromatic three-dimensional forms, Kato approaches his works in a painterly way, applying layers of color to add depth and detail. With their simple symbolic forms and strong colors, Kato’s enigmatic figures are associated with Paleolithic art, animism beliefs, and the directness and expression of early childhood creative discovery.
Izumi Kato was born in Shimane, Japan, and graduated with a degree in painting from Musashino University in 1992. After working as a manual laborer while aspiring to become a musician, Kato began his career as a painter in earnest in the late 1990s. He is best known for his paintings of innocent, otherworldly figures, often depicted with large heads. Since the early 2000s, he has been showing sculptures created with a wide range of materials, including wood, soft vinyl, stone, cloth, plastic models, and, most recently, aluminum. For Untitled, his new piece commissioned by Sculpture Milwaukee, Kato cast large quarried stones in aluminum and arranged them in a totem-like form resembling a figure. Unlike traditional sculptors, whose creation is primarily rooted in monochromatic three-dimensional forms, Kato approaches his works in a painterly way, applying layers of color to add depth and detail. With their simple symbolic forms and strong colors, Kato’s enigmatic figures are associated with Paleolithic art, animism beliefs, and the directness and expression of early childhood creative discovery.
