Takeshi Kawashima (b. 1930) is a Japanese-American painter and sculptor whose long career has unfolded across two continents, bringing together the rich pictorial traditions of Japan with the abstract and Color Field currents of postwar New York. Born in Japan in 1930, Kawashima studied at Musashino Art School in Tokyo, where he graduated in 1955. He then received a teaching position at Yoyogi Art School in Tokyo, where he remained until 1958. He mounted his first solo show at Muramatsu Gallery in Tokyo that same year, and he subsequently held annual solo exhibitions there from 1958 to 1961, establishing his early reputation within the vibrant postwar Tokyo art scene.

Kawashima exhibited with the Yomiuri Independents in Tokyo through 1963, the same year he received a commission to execute a mural for Agricultural Hall, his first large-scale work in a public space. That year he moved to New York, arriving at a moment of extraordinary vitality in American art when Color Field painting, hard-edge abstraction, and Minimalism were transforming the field. Building on his success in New York during the 1960s, Kawashima mounted a number of solo exhibitions including at the well-known Waddell Gallery, where he exhibited in 1967 and 1969. His significance was solidified by his inclusion in the landmark 1965-66 exhibition New Japanese Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, from which the museum purchased one of his paintings for its permanent collection. His painting Untitled 1964 was again exhibited at MoMA in the 1967 exhibition 1960s Selection from Museum Collection.

Kawashima's mature painting is characterized by luminous color, simplified geometric structure, and a quiet meditative quality that reflects both the reductive vocabulary of American Minimalism and the deeper aesthetic traditions of Japanese art. In the 1980s, Kawashima turned to sculpture as a medium, mounting several exhibitions in both New York and Japan. Returning to Japan in 2016, Kawashima created the Takeshi Kawashima Art Factory in his hometown, where he still produces and houses his artworks. His paintings and sculptures are held in significant public and private collections in both the United States and Japan, where they are appreciated as thoughtful contributions to the transpacific artistic dialogue that has shaped so much of contemporary art on both sides of the ocean.