Hidetoshi Nagasawa: The Last Interview with the Artist Who Loved Italy

In a 2018 interview with Artribune, Japanese-Italian artist Hidetoshi Nagasawa reflects on his five decades in Italy, his artistic journey, and the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures in his work. Nagasawa, who died in 2019, recounts arriving in Italy by bicycle in 1965, originally planning a one-year trip that extended to fifty years after his bike was stolen in Milan. He describes his early years in a shared studio in Sesto San Giovanni with artists like Fabro, Nigro, and Trotta, exchanging drawings for rent. Nagasawa discusses his research into commonalities between cultures, citing the parallel between Fra Angelico and a 15th-century Japanese monk-painter. He explains his preference for joinery using balance, levers, and gravity over welding, and his interest in installing contemporary works in ancient contexts. Nagasawa also speaks about his daily practice of generating ideas, often discarding them the next day, and his separation of Zen Buddhism from his art. The interview covers his connection to the Gutai group, which he encountered as a teenager and later met personally, and his belief that an artist without ideas is not an artist.