Rakuko Naito, born in Tokyo, Japan, graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 1958, where she majored in nihonga painting, an artform utilizing traditional Japanese materials. Following graduation, she moved to New York with her artist husband, Tadaaki Kuwayama and briefly attended the Art Students League in search of a less conventional method of working. During the early to mid-1960s, she made optical art and experimented with spray paint, masking tapes, and acrylic paint, a material which was still relatively new at that time and introduced to her by American abstract painter Sam Francis. Naito created works that emphasized flatness and downplayed the artist’s hand. By the mid-1960s when Op art became popular with artists, Naito’s experimental practices led her to simple forms, flat monochromatic colors, and simple lines. This approach continues to inform her practice today.
Naito has experimented with integrating such materials as sand, nails, and wire into geometric, colorless works to explore texture and materiality. Naito’s work is characterized by a focused repetition of actions, decisions, and manipulation of forms, eschewing narrative. Her interest in geometry has continued into her works with paper: reflecting her interest in the natural forms and textures of the material that creates a reality which she views as transcending the limits of painting and drawing. For the past three decades, Naito has dedicated her artistic work to research into the malleability and strength of kozo and mino washi, types of traditional Japanese paper. The fibers that make up these types of paper are very strong, and their use can be traced back to the Nara period in eighth-century Japan. Naito harmonizes traditional materials with a highly tactile and modern approach to sculpture. The artist's meticulous hand is evident in every piece of folded, torn, burnt, and applied piece of paper, culminating in the stunning work. As a result of her methodology, Naito’s work reaches somewhere between our notion of “drawing” and “sculpture.” With an innate preference for order and structure, Naito joins a circle of artists such as Mel Bochner, Eve Hesse and Sol LeWitt.
Naito’s work has been included in group exhibitions such as White Cube, Mies-Van-der-Rohe Haus, Berlin, Germany, 2019; Monocromos: de Malevich al presente, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2004; the International Women Artists' Biennale, Incheon, Korea 2009; Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio 2007; Optical Edge, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, 2007; A Moment Becomes Eternity, Bergen Museum, New Jersey,1993; Tokyo International Biennale, Japan, 1974; Black & White, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, 1966; and Motion and Movement, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1964.
Naito currently lives and works in New York. She was an artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in 2003. Her works can be found in prestigious public collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; the Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, FL; the Kemper Art Collection, Chicago, IL; the State University of New York at Potsdam, NY; the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA.