Born in Tokyo, he began his career during the formative years of Japan’s prewar avant-garde art movement, joining the Avant-Garde Western Painting Institute in 1933, organized by Harue Koga, Seiji Tōgō, and others. In 1938, together with Jirō Yoshihara, Osamu Yamaguchi, and others, he formed the Nika “Kyūshitsukai” (Nine Rooms Society), and the following year participated in the establishment of the Bijutsu Bunka Kyōkai (Art Culture Association), which centered on Surrealist artists such as Ichirō Fukuzawa.

He pursued an expression that transcended the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and his formative thinking had a profound influence on postwar Japanese art. It extended to members of the Experimental Workshop, such as Katsuhiro Yamaguchi and Shōzō Kitadai, as well as to Mono-ha artists including Nobuo Sekine, Katsuro Yoshida, Katsuhiko Narita, Susumu Koshimizu, and Kishio Suga. In this way, he played a leading role in shaping Japanese art from the prewar through the postwar period.