(b Los Angeles, 7 Dec 1923).

 American sculptor, photographer and film maker. Born of Japanese parents, he received his first training in sculpture from the American sculptor Donal Hord (b 1902) in 1941. After demobilization from the US army in 1946 he worked as an antiques restorer and from 1947 to 1948 studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to Paris in 1948 where he studied under Ossip Zadkine and in 1949 under Léger. In the latter year he came into contact with the Cobra group and exhibited with them at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1950 he was one of the co-founders of the Galerie 8 in Paris and also studied at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière. Also in 1950 he began producing ‘Junk’ sculptures made from bronze foundry droppings and ‘One day sculptures’. In 1951 he again exhibited with the Cobra group, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Liège, showing a number of angular, spiked sculptures (see 1971 exh. cat.). Until the mid-1960s he produced iron and bronze sculptures on recurrent subjects, such as Warrior, Seed, Germination, using roughly textured metal in aggressive organic forms, as in Warrior (1956; Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus.). These reflected his comment that his ‘sculptures consist of three components: velocity, erotics, violence in that order’.