A stunning piece from Japanese artist Pater Sato’s 1980 series, “SatoMasochism.”
 
Artist Pater Sato—born Yoshinori Sato in 1945 in Yokosuka, Japan—switched out his first name after portraying Pater in a high school play based on the book, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. When his family relocated to Tokyo, Sato enrolled in a graphic design school where he excelled at illustration. He would go on to attend Setsu Mode Seminar, a prestigious fashion design school in Tokyo named for one of Japan’s greatest illustrators of fashion, Setsu Nagasawa. When he was done with school, Sato landed a job with a large advertising studio, as well as hooking up with Japanese rock and roll-oriented performance group Tokyo Kid Brothers. The group would find their way to New York bringing more art opportunities to Sato, including working under New York-based Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins.

Upon returning to Tokyo in the early 1970s, Sato began his career as a freelance artist and his work has appeared in magazines around the world, in books, and on album covers. In 1986 a museum and gallery in Harajuku dedicated to all things Pater Sato opened its doors and is still in business today. The artist died entirely too soon at the young age of 49 in 1994, though he has thankfully left behind an extensive portfolio of work, including a fantastic series from 1980 cleverly entitled “SatoMasochism.” Most recently, Sato’s images were used by designer Stella McCartney in her 2017/2018 Fall/Winter line for men. You can see images from the sexually-charged “SatoMasochims” series as well as other examples of Sato’s work below. NSFW.
 

 

 

Sato’s work in a magazine ad from 1978.
 

 
More ‘SatoMasochism’ after the jump…