Born in Morioka city, Iwate Prefecture, in 1944. In 1968 graduated from Tama Art University’s Graduate School of Painting. While still a student in 1967 he won the 11th Shell Art Award. From his first solo show in 1968 until today, in a career spanning over 45 years, he has shown work in a vast number of exhibitions.

His two major recent solo exhibitions within Japan, Kishio Suga at the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum from November 2014 until February of this year, and from January to March this year the exhibition KISHIO SUGA_Situated Latency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, ignited contemporary aesthetic discussions.

His international activity is also ever-expanding: in 1978 he represented Japan at the 38th Venice Biennale (Japanese Pavilion commissioner: Yusuke Nakahara). He has also exhibited in a vast number of international exhibitions including Japanese Avant-Garde 1910-1970 (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1986), Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, before travelling to the Guggenheim Museum, New York), and Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha (Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2012), to name only a few. His ongoing projects are almost too numerate to mention: he held a solo exhibition at Blain|Southern in London in 2015, and this year he will take part in the group exhibition The Wuzhen International Contemporary Art Invitational Exhibition (Wuzhen, China), as well as holding a solo exhibition at the Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy, with another show in the offing in Rio de Janeiro, provisionally entitled Appearing Together: Japanese Art 1955-1975. His works have been included in a great number of museums within Japan beginning with the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, as well as by the Tate Modern in London, the Dallas Museum of Art, M＋(Hong Kong), the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Glenstone Foundation, the Pinault Collection and numerous others.