Born in Aomori Prefecture in 1904. He began creating works in earnest in the 1930s, following an exhibition of Russian Futurist exile painters in Japan in 1920. Although World War II and health reasons forced him to interrupt his activities, he resumed in the mid-1950s and energetically produced cutting-edge works that traversed the realms of painting and sculpture. He was an artist who played an important role in the pioneering Japanese avant-garde art movement. A leader of Japanese art from the prewar to the postwar period until his death in 2001, Saito was also an excellent educator, teaching at Tama Art University and fostering many students, mainly of the Mono-ha movement.

Influenced by the graffiti he saw carved into stone walls in Paris in the early 1960s, Saito created a series of “drill paintings” using plywood instead of canvas and an electric drill instead of a paintbrush to create his screens. His piece Work is one of these drill paintings. The delicate balance between the carefree movement of the rotating tip of the electric drill and the artist’s will to gently control it produces rhythmic and tasteful dots and lines on the media. By applying paint to the uneven surface with a roller or knife as if painting on a wall, he creates a unique depth and breadth of color shading and blurring on the wood.