Hiroshi Sugito is a contemporary Japanese painter whose work employs themes found in traditional Nihonga paintings. Painted with a light touch, Sugito’s semi-abstract depictions of figures, smoke, and trees have an airy and light-filled quality. “I start moving my brush like walking into the woods, away from everything, and I want words and meanings to lose their power and just fade away,” he has said. Born in 1970 in Nagoya, Japan, he studied under Yoshitomo Nara at the Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts. He was later invited by Nara to participate in the seminal group show “Over the Rainbow” in 1997. Sugito currently lives and works in his hometown of Nagoya, Japan. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, and the Sammlung Goetz in Munich, among others.