Yasuo Mizui was born in Kyoto in 1925. After studying science and technology in Japan, he chose to devote himself to sculpture. Arriving in France in 1953, he attended classes at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1960, he took part in a sculpture symposium in Austria, the first of a series of eleven held in eight countries around the world. Thanks to the program that allocates 1% of the construction budget of a public building to the creation of an artwork, he produced thirty-one monumental sculptures throughout France. In 1985, he was awarded the distinction of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.
He arrived in Lacoste at the beginning of the 1970s. Bernard Pfriem, founder and director of the Lacoste School of the Arts, invited him to serve as an example to students as an internationally renowned sculptor. Students were thus able to observe and interact with Mizui while he sculpted in the Lacoste quarry. For twenty years, Mizui created sculptures from the local cut stone, which he then installed in his garden, where he had built his residence to live with his wife Miyoko and his assistant Keiko Fujiwara. In 1995, he brought over around forty of his sculptures that had been exhibited in Japan. He thus created a route that visitors could follow while admiring these works in the shade of the pine trees.
In 2006, He was made an honorary citizen of lacoste.
Mizui also produced works on paper, using techniques he had developed himself, notably Metagraphies and Spatulas. On long rolls of paper, he sometimes created calligraphies, one of which expressed his wish to “live to be 100 years old.” Sadly, he died of cancer in 2008.
