HIDEO SAWADA

Hideo Sawada is a sculptor from Kawagoe City in Saitama Prefecture. He studied Sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts, before attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg, Germany to train in Western Sculpture. Despite his further training, Sawada’s sculptures, which he began exhibiting in galleries in Japan from 1989, demonstrate Japanese traditional aesthetics rather than any influence of Western naturalistic sculptures.

Whilst his small-scale sculptures are figurative, Sawada refrains from giving his characters distinct facial features or expressions, favouring simple and generalised forms. With slow and careful carving of their loosely rendered faces, the figures display Sawada’s adherence to representing the essence of nature as opposed to replicating it.