Kikuo Saito: Dime Lake

Curated by Kikuo Saito Studio and Kristin Larkin LoGerfo

25 Jun. – 20 Dec. 2026
Opening Reception: 4pm-7pm

One does not immediately associate Kikuo Saito, master of abstraction, with the landscape genre, and yet he spent much of his life painting the natural scenes around him; from the Hudson Valley to his old summer home in the Victorian-built whaling community of Cape May, New Jersey, from the surfside hamlet of Rincon, Puerto Rico, to the more kempt, parkland precincts and ramshackle urban cores of Madrid, Vienna, and Rome. He never traveled without his sketchbook and watercolors, pastels, charcoal, pencil, and pen, and his plein-air renderings gave figurative expression to his fancy, making his “color fields” bloom and blurring the distinctions among water, cloud, and sky. This show features a diverse selection of these landscapes, along with a major painting — in fact, the last painting Saito ever completed — a large abstract canvas given the landscaped name “Dime Lake.” There is, of course, no real Dime Lake, at least none that Saito ever knew, making his depiction an imaginary vista, the view within, lush with myriad greens. These landscape paintings are displayed alongside works by Kristin Larkin LoGerfo, a student of Saito, and Paul LoGerfo, her husband and the physician of Saito’s first wife, the choreographer and dancer Eva Maier. Brought together by Maier, the friends and companions forged a close bond, particularly through their regular trips together through nature. These works are like the postcards they brought back.