
Megumi Yuasa, Paisagem (Landscape), 1995
For over six decades, Japanese-Brazilian sculptor and ceramicist Megumi Yuasa (b. 1938, São Paulo, Brazil) has developed a distinctive body of work that fuses Japanese and Brazilian aesthetics, materials and techniques, reflecting the history of the East Asian diaspora in Brazil. With an anarchic spirit, he elaborates on the conventions of Japanese ceramics by incorporating non-traditional materials like metals, glass, oxides and paints. His work and teachings express his personal cosmology of absolute interconnection and universal source: “Everything is made from everything, everything depends on everything. Everything is everything.” Taking elements and moments from nature, his artworks act as distilled landscapes in which elements like trees, moons, clouds and seeds interact, whether balancing on, projecting from or supporting one another. For Yuasa, clay is more than a material substance; it transcends time and materiality. The artist has remarked, “When forming itself, our planet was a ball of magma that cooled down and formed hard rock. Upon the rock came water and, from it, life. Meanwhile the decomposed rock became clay. I wasn’t surprised when N.A.S.A. declared some time ago that we are made of the same material as the stars. Every ceramist knows that.”
Born to a Japanese missionary and pastor, Yuasa grew up in a culturally rich household in São Paulo that nurtured his love for art, literature and philosophy. As a young man, he worked in advertising, agricultural processing and at his father’s church, while studying Marxist philosophy. In 1964, shortly before Brazil’s military coup, Yuasa was imprisoned for a year despite having no formal political affiliations. After his release, Megumi married Naoko Yuasa, and together they traveled to Goiânia in the Center-West region of Brazil, where the lush landscape and materials influenced his art. Pedagogy plays a central role in Yuasa’s practice. He has spent decades organizing and teaching ceramics classes and workshops across Brazil.
Yuasa has produced multiple series over the years, such as Espássaros (Birds in Space), Nuvem (Clouds) and Espada (Sword). Taken together they demonstrate his ability to seamlessly merge material experimentation with philosophical inquiry. For the tall, soaring sculptures of Espássaros, Yuasa drew inspiration from Romanian artist Constantin Brâncuși, particularly his iconic work Bird in Space (1932–1940). Each piece combines various elements—long rods, bases and polymorphic glazed ceramic components—into a harmonious assemblage. His Nuvem series transforms earthy clay into motifs of lightness and air, taking the form of floating or heavy clouds depending on whether they hang in the air or rest on a surface. In Espada, individually articulated reeds or pods, half iron and half ceramic, become talismanic swords from nature. Other untitled works from the 1980s evoke minerals, vegetables or animals, contrasting disparate materials, shapes and textures in unexpected, whimsical ways. Yuasa’s work is formally aligned with that of Isamu Noguchi and Brâncuși, particularly in their shared approaches to synthesis, repetition, and verticality, as well as in the juxtaposition and interplay of organic and sculpted forms. His use of cast clay, alongside his experimentation with painting on glazed ceramics and other synthetic materials, creates parallels with international contemporaries such as Ken Price, Ron Nagel and Toshiko Takaezu. Curator and critic Lucy R. Lippard’s description of Price—“something of a Surrealist, something of a purist, something of an expressionist, something of a naturalist”—applies as well to Yuasa, highlighting their playful range and invention in the field of ceramics.
Megumi Yuasa has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Gomide&Co, São Paulo (2024); Galeria de Arte São Paulo (1987 and 1991) and Galeria Astréia, São Paulo (1973), among others. Group exhibitions featuring his work include Diásporas asiáticas: Tocar a terra - cerâmica contemporânea nipo-brasileira, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2024); O Curso do Sol, Gomide&Co, São Paulo (2023); Laços do Olhar, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2008), Nipo-Brasileiros no Acervo da Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2008); Mostra Internacional Brasil-Japão, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand - MASP, São Paulo (1998); 80 anos da Imigração Japonesa, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand - MASP, São Paulo (1988); 10º Panorama de Arte Atual Brasileira - Escultura Objeto, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (1978); and the 13th and the 14th editions of the Bienal de São Paulo (1975 and 1977), among others. Yuasa's work is the collection of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo.
Megumi Yuasa, Untitled, 1990
Megumi Yuasa, Untitled, 1980s
Megumi Yuasa, Nuvem I (Cloud I), 2024
Megumi Yuasa, Untitled, 1990
Megumi Yuasa, Paisagem insólita (Unusual landscape), 1997–2024
Megumi Yuasa, Untitled, 1990s
Megumi Yuasa, Pedra fundamental (Cornerstone), 1990s
Megumi Yuasa, Ar (Air), 1999–2022
Megumi Yuasa, Paisagem (Landscape), 1995
Megumi Yuasa, Do outro lado da ponte (Across the bridge), 1980s
Megumi Yuasa, Untitled, 1990
Megumi Yuasa, Teatro do Absurdo (Theater of the Absurd), 1991
Megumi Yuasa, Nuvem VII (Cloud VII), 2024