Arihiro Hamada

Arihiro Hamada’s rich career as a designer and challenging history as a child of World War II era Japan led him to his current aesthetic: typography as a visual tool for promoting peace. Hamada’s dazzling digital prints often use letter forms and traditional Japanese imagery to embody the uplifting effects of international harmony. Light is a constant motif in Hamada’s work and letters and figures often rise toward a warm, inviting glow. The beauty of nature also drives Hamada’s prints. The naturalistic greens and browns that Hamada employs, coupled with the organic movement in his artwork, emphasize the implicit relationship that connects nature to the notion of world peace.

Hamada, who has been a successful designer since the 1960s, established his own design studio in 1985. Since the late 1990s, however, his focus has shifted to fine art and he redirected the fertile visual vocabulary he acquired as a designer toward creating poignant images that speak to the world’s need for reconciliation. Hamada lives and works in Osaka City.