Trained in psychology in Japan, then a teacher, Takako Saito joins the artistic education movement Sōzō Biiku undō.
Trained in psychology in Japan, then a teacher, Takako Saito joins the artistic education movement Sōzō Biiku undō. Arriving in New York in 1963, she joins the Fluxus group, for which she makes wooden boxes in the Japanese tradition. Daughter of a landowning father, the younger of three children, Takako Saito spends a peaceful childhood in this bourgeois milieu, despite the war and the violent destruction. After studying psychology at the Nihon Joshi Daigaku (Japan Women’s University), she becomes a teacher. Wishing to promote freedom of creation, she joins the Sōzō Biiku undŏ, a movement for creative art education founded by Teijirŏ Kubo in 1953. During one of the numerous workshops organised by this group, Takako Saito meets the artist Ay-O. Thanks to this friendship, she is brought into contact with the avant-garde movements in Tokyo and then in New York, where Ay-O settles from 1958. Drawn by her friend's accounts, she arrives in New York in 1963. Ay-O introduces her to George Maciunas, who brings her into the Fluxus group, sharing with it, through her experience, its free spirit and means of expression. From 1964 onwards the collective begins publishing magazines such as CC V TRE and making plastic boxes containing cards or various materials. G. Maciunas, fascinated by the nail-less wooden boxes of Japan, is said to have asked Takako Saito to make some. Through her culture, she probably influenced certain aesthetic choices of the group, and notably all of the production of the Boxes, the most famous of which are variations on chess sets: Nut & Bolt Chess (1964); Grinder Chess (1965); Fluxus Chess (1965). Annalisa Rimmaudo, Extract from the Dictionnaire universel des créatrices © 2013 Des femmes – Antoinette Fouque