Rakuko Naito (b. 1935, Tokyo) is a Japanese American artist who moved from Tokyo to New York, where she has lived and worked ever since. Beginning as an optical art painter in the early 1960s, she explored acrylics, spray paint and masking tape, eventually focusing on delicate, monochromatic assemblages of manipulated, layered and curled strips of kozo washi, a traditional Japanese paper, which she has explored for the past three decades. With a natural affinity for order and structure, her work relies on the repetition of actions and decisions and avoids narrative. Her papers are held in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, and she is represented by Maya Frodeman Gallery. Her work appears in "Hard Line Women" at Nonaka-Hill.
Rakuko Naito. Photo by Thomas Haar, courtesy of The Mayor Gallery
