Hiro Ando was born in 1973 on the Island of Shikoku, Japan. and began a career as an illustrator after graduating from the university of Tama Art in Tokyo in 1995.

Hiro Ando is a polyvalent artist who has worked in many different mediums. He has used oil on canvas, digital supports and worked in video art. Hiro’s painting technique consists of elaborating several basic sketches before beginning to paint on the canvas. The last takes shape and emerges from the streets of Tokyo by night, clad with colors and graphics and moving in groups. Hiro paints dark urban landscapes with red fish scattered in the image. The mix of these two topics makes the whole canvas both dynamic and violent, with an odd feeling of eternity due to the red fish which are reminiscent of ancient Japanese paintings and watercolors.

Just recently Ando added sculpture to his large spread of media and started working on a series of sculptures which are inspired by Japanese popular culture. In this way, his subject, the cat, which in Japan is a lucky charm in the form of the Maneki-Neko, comes in a variety of traditional Japanese figures such as the Samurai or the Sumo. He translates this theme in a very modern way. The shiny and smooth materials, the bright colors, the sharp but rounded shapes of Hiro Ando’s sculptures take us to the world of Mangas in which the artist’s generation grew up. The art of Hiro Ando is the meeting between the Meiji era and the Manga. It is Shogun in Pokemon land, it is traditional Japan viewed through young eyes. It is Japanese Neo Pop Art.