40 Years of Explosive Color

The painter Naoto Nakagawa was 18 when he boarded a cargo ship in Osaka, Japan, and left home to sail to New York City in 1962. “Not speaking English, not knowing anything, all I had was my ambition,” Mr. Nakagawa said recently. His artwork has made similar leaps into strange worlds, moving in seemingly opposing directions stylistically, but ultimately achieving, in the rendering, a breakdown of barriers between Asian and American contemporary art. This month, two New York galleries will jointly present works from the earliest and latest junctures in Mr. Nakagawa’s four decades of artistic activity.