Born in Tokyo in 1936. In 1954, he entered Tokyo University of the Arts, where he studied under Ryohei Koiso. While working as an office worker after graduating from college, he formed Hi-Red Center with Genpei Akasegawa and Natsuyuki Nakanishi in 1963 and gave numerous performances. The activities of the Hi-Red Center came to a halt following the 1,000 yen note trial in which Genpei Akasegawa was indicted, and Takamatsu shifted his focus to individual activities. After creating his signature Shadow series, Takamatsu began to use natural materials such as wood and stone in his “Oneness” series around 1969. His Oneness of Brick is a part of that series.

In this work, Takamatsu processed a piece of natural material and then put it back together again, showing that although the state of the material may change, the existence of the object as a whole remains unchanged. Here, the issue of self-identity is addressed, a topic that has been a consistent theme since the early days of his work. Since then, Takamatsu has continued to conceptualize phenomena, things, and incidents he encounters in real life through a unique thought process, and has developed a wide variety of works in both method and style, posing fundamental questions.