Shinichi Sawada

b. 1982 · Shiga, Japan

Half the week he bakes bread. The other half he builds spike-covered clay spirits, thorn by patient thorn, and fires them for three days and nights in a wood kiln.

The life

Sawada was born in 1982 and grew up in Shiga prefecture near Kyoto. Autistic and speaking very little, he joined the Nakayoshi Fukushikai welfare facility around 2000, dividing his time between its bakery and its ceramics workshop ever since. His sculptures dry for at least six months before an annual firing in a hand-built wood kiln lasting three days and nights. In 2013 curator Massimiliano Gioni chose his work for The Encyclopedic Palace at the Venice Biennale, and international shows have followed ever since.

The work

Ceramic creatures bristling with hand-applied spikes: stacked and outward-gazing faces, horns, teeth, scales and talons, echoing the demons and spirits of Japanese mythology. The wood firing gives each piece its scorched, earthen colour. His work is held by the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Shiga Museum of Art in Japan.

Why we love them

The patience is the point: thousands of thorns, six months of drying, one firing a year. Slow magic from the quietest man in the room.

Go deeper

• Shinichi Sawada at the Outsider Art Fair
• Jennifer Lauren Gallery
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

← Back to the field guide