Born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1919. In 1933, he entered the Osaka Art School, but since he had not fully recovered from the valvular heart disease he had suffered from as a child, he left the school and worked in the advertising department of Hankyu Corporation, where he was engaged in commercial design work. While studying painting on his own, he continued to enter the Nika Exhibition at the suggestion of Jiro Yoshihara, but was unsuccessful and moved to France in 1952. A solo exhibition at the Craven Gallery soon after his arrival in France was met with a great response, and he went on to exhibit his work in a number of international exhibitions, earning him high acclaim both in France and internationally.

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, Sugai produced abstract paintings with heavy materials and simplified, earthy forms, then moved on to abstract expressionism with organic forms and bright colors, such as in his “Autoroute” series, and from the 1970s onwards, to two-dimensional works such as his “Festival” series, which are reminiscent of road signs and feature standardized forms and bright colors.

The images on each of the three sides of Tryptique are similar to the figures depicted in the previous works. On the other hand, the entire painting is in three dimensions, which makes what was static change dynamically, and we can see the budding of the “Autoroute” series paintings, which have dynamic tension.