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Sadao Hasegawa

Sadao Hasegawa - Artists - Garth Greenan Gallery

Sadao Hasegawa, Untitled, Pencil, ink, and gouache on paper, 18 1/10 x 14 4/5 inches.

Sadao Hasagwa was a draftsman, illustrator, and painter born in the Tōkai region of Japan in 1945. Hasegawa spent his early adulthood in Tokyo, immersed in the city’s gay nightlife. Largely self-taught, he published illustrations in gay magazines including Barazoku, Sabu, The Adon, MLMW, and Samson. The most significant Japanese fetish artist of his generation, Hasegawa created oeuvre of boundary-pushing, erotic art that forged new horizons of beauty and desire. 

Initially, his work closely followed the precedent of Tom of Finland and, especially, the Japanese fetish artist Go Mishima, but, through the 1980s, a series of transformative trips to Indonesia and Thailand led to profound changes in his approach. Through the final years of his life, the artist’s work became enveloped with quasi-psychedelic profusions of Tantric symbols and Southeast Asian landscapes, Buddhist statuary and cosmic backdrops, jungle animals and tropical plants. These ecstatic, skillfully rendered scenes of overlapping motifs limn a pan-Asian paradise where the erotic and spiritual commingle and become one.

Hasegawa’s work was the subject of just one known solo show during his lifetime, Sadao Hasegawa’s Alchemism-Meditation for 1973, at SEIBU Shibuya department store, Tokyo. Though his work was distributed in internationally in the gay press, he declined to send his work abroad, fearful Japanese customs authorities would seize it upon its return. As such, physical examples of his art have rarely been seen outside of Japan.

Garth Greenan Gallery’s representation of Hasegawa’s estate continues its history of giving an international platform to overlooked and underrepresented artists. The presentation in Miami follows closely on the heels of a critically celebrated exhibition of Hasegawa’s work at a. SQUIRE in London in the spring of 2025.

Posthumous solo exhibitions have been presented at TOGA TRIANGLE (2024, Tokyo), and at Gallery Naruyama (2024, 2023, 2014, 2000, Tokyo). Recent group exhibitions include Echoes of Mishima, Galerie Pepe (2023, Mexico City); Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III, Tai Kwun Contemporary (2022, Hong Kong); G, Gallery Naruyama (2017, Tokyo); and Naked Men 1876–2016, Gallery Naruyama (2016, Tokyo). His works are held in the collections of the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS; the Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong; and the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.

Sadao Hasegawa is represented in Japan by Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo.

 

 

Sadao Hasegawa

Lived and worked in Tokyo, Japan

1945
Born in Tōkai region, Japan

1999
Died in Bangkok, Thailand

 

Selected Solo Exhibitions

1973
Sadao Hasegawa's Alchemism-Mediation for 1973, SEIBU Shibuya department store, Tokyo, Japan

2000
LINGA, Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan, December 1–December 20.

2014
Sadao Hasegawa 1978–1983, Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan, August 28–September 13.

2023
Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan

2023–2024
Sadao Hasegawa: Winter, Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan, November 9, 2023–February 3, 2024.

2024
Sadao Hasegawa: Spring, Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan, February 22–May 18, 2024.
TOGA TRIANGLE, Tokyo, Japan

2025
Sadao Hasegawa, a. SQUIRE, London, United Kingdom, March 8–April 12, 2025
Magazine Cover Original Illustration, Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan, April 3–June 7, 2025

 

Selected Group Exhibitions

2016
Naked Men 1876–2016, Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan

2017
G, Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, Japan

2022
Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong

2023
Echoes of Mishima, Galerie Pepe, Mexico City, Mexico, September 4–November 5

Selected Collections

Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas
Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong
Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, California

Books and Catalogues

Sadao Hasegawa: Paintings and Drawings. London: Éditions Aubrey Walter/Gay Men’s Press, 1990.

Sadao Hasegawa: Paradise Visions. Japan: Kochi Studio, 1996.

SADAO HASEGAWA 1945-1999. Japan: Gallery Naruyama, 2023.

Sadao Hasegawa. United Kingdom: Baron Books, 2022.

Periodicals

Culpan, Daniel. “Sadao Hasegawa Satisfies His Carnal Appetites.” Frieze, March 27, 2025.

Denman, Tom. “Sadao Hasegawa’s ‘English Companion Inc.” e-flux, March 27, 2025.

Hasegawa, Sadao. Untitled. 1970s. Gouache and collage on illustration board. Barazoku (Phantom of Youth), illustration, Issue No.33, October 1975.

­———. Untitled. 1970s. Acrylic and ink on illustration board. Barazoku (Phantom of Youth), illustration, Issue No.33, October 1975.

———. Untitled. 1976. Acrylic on paper. Barazoku (The Long Night), illustration, Issue No.41, June 1976.

———. Untitled. 1977. Acrylic on canvas board. Barazoku (The Aesthetics of Voyeurism), illustration, Issue No.58, November 1977.

———. Untitled. 1978. Acrylic on canvas board. Barazoku (Spring, Spring, Spring Romantic Male Calendar), illustration, Issue No.60, January 1978.

———. Untitled. 1978. Acrylic on canvas board. Barazoku (In the Midst of Unbearable Loneliness), illustration, Issue No.61, February 1978.

———. Untitled. 1978. Acrylic on canvas board. Barazoku (The Tale of Fool), illustration, Issue No.63, April 1978.

———. The Lattice Carving Labyrinth - The Monument of Lips by Yukio Mishima. 1978. Acrylic and collage on canvas board. MLMW (My Life My Way), illustration, Issue No.8, November 1978.

———. The Lattice Carving Labyrinth - The Monument of Lips by Yukio Mishima. 1978. Acrylic and collage on canvas board. MLMW (My Life My Way), illustration, Issue No.9, January 1979.

———. Untitled. 1980. Acrylic and bird feather on canvas. Adon magazine, cover, March 1980.

———. Untitled. 1980. Colored pencil and glitter on paper. Adon magazine, cover, October 1980.

———. Untitled. 1982. Pencil, ink, and gouache and on paper. Samson magazine, cover, October 1982.

———. Untitled. 1983. Pencil, ink, and gouache on paper. Samson magazine, cover, April 1983.

———. Untitled. 1983. Pencil and gouache on paper. Samson magazine, cover, August 1983.

———. Untitled. 1984. Pencil, ink, and collage on paper. Samson magazine, cover, June 1984.

———. Untitled. 1984. Pencil, ink, and gouache on paper. Samson Magazine, cover, September 1984.

———. Untitled. 1985. Pencil, ink, and collage on paper. Samson magazine, cover, May 1985.

———. Untitled. 1985. Pencil and ink on paper. Samson magazine, cover, July 1985.

———. Untitled. 1987. Acrylic and glitter on board. Barazoku magazine, cover, Winter 1987.

Rosen, Miss. “The Radical Revolutionary Homoerotic Art of Sadao Hasegawa.” AnOther, June 27, 2022.

Smart, Harald. “Sadao Hasegawa’s Drawings Will Scare You (And Turn You On).” i-D Magazine, March 14, 2025.