Hidetoshi Nagasawa was born in Manchuria in 1940. He died in 2018 in Milan.
In 1963 he obtained a degree in Architecture and Interior Design and straight away began working in the design studio of a department store and later in an architect’s studio. In 1966 he began his bicycle trip – fundamental for his life and for his art – across Asia, passing through Bangkok, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Persia, Iraq, Jordan, the Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. From East to West, from Greece to Italy, from Brindisi to Naples, Rome, Florence and Milan, where in 1967 his unrepeatable adventure came to an end. Once in Milan, during the Seventies, he came into contact with artists such as Castellani, Fabro, Nigro, Trotta, and Ongaro. He formed a particularly strong friendship with Fabro.
The early Seventies saw his first personal shows, in Milan (Lambert, Toselli Galleries), Rome (L’Attico, Arco d’Alibert Galleries) and Turin (Galleria Christian Stein); in 1972 he took part in the 26th Venice Bienniale. Nagasawa has taken part in many Italian and international exhibitions, both personal and collective, in public spaces: 1978, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi; 1982 and ’88, the Venice Biennale; Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna and private shows: 1981, Galleria Sperone, Turin; 1988, Valeria Belvedere, Milan (with which he interweaves a constant artistic relationship with exhibitions in 1990, 1992, 1993, 1996). These were followed by the Documenta show in Kassel (1992), the Venice Biennale (1993) – with a monographic room in the Italian pavilion – the Tokyo International Exhibition Center (1995, The Garden of the Seven Fountains, the first garden project of the artist), the Fattoria di Celle in Pistoia (Hyperuranium) and the Miró Foundation in Palma di Mallorca (1996, Jardin), Palazzo della Triennale in Milan and the Palazzo Pretorio in Certaldo (2001, Giardino della casa del tè), Milan’s Palazzo delle Stelline (2002), Modena’s Caffè Letterario (2003), Rome’s Galleria Arco d’Alibert (2004) and Nuova Pesa (2005) and Il Ponte gallery in Florence (Interferenza). In 2006 he took part in the 12th Biennale Internazionale di Scultura di Carrara and he exhibited at the Torre di Guevara on Ischia. In 2008 he made the work Giardino rovesciato for the museum park at the Medici villa La Magia in Quarrata (Pistoia).
His works feature in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, and in Japan (the National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, the Adachi-ku municipal hall, Tokyo and the Contemporary Art Center, Mito).