Toru Hamada

°1953, born in Matsuyama, Japan. Lives and Works in Saint-Lubin-de-la Haye (F).

About the Artist

Toru Hamada, a Japanese sculptor, painter and printmaker based in Europe since 1972, creates a body of work in which matter and form breathe together with quiet intensity. Poetic yet monumental, his practice is rooted in a deep sensitivity to material, space and time.

Often carved in stone, his sculptures bear the trace of a mastery shaped at the Scuola del Marmo in Carrara, while opening onto universal themes of nature, life and impermanence. For Hamada, painting is not a simple arrangement of colour, but a living process — a continuous act of construction and erosion, where each brushstroke disrupts and redefines the original form through successive layers of matter.

Moving between the intimacy of finely worked details and the expansive presence of public installations, his work balances delicacy and scale, inviting contemplation while asserting a powerful physical presence. Shown in museums and galleries across Japan, Europe and the United States, Toru Hamada’s work unfolds at the meeting point of tradition and modernity, where ancient gestures resonate within a contemporary sensibility.