Yozo Hamaguchi, born 1909 in Wakayama, enrolled at the Department of Sculpture of Tokyo School of the Arts in 1927, but decided to leave the school in 1930 to travel to France. Hamaguchi lived in Paris until 1939, teaching himself oil painting and copperplate print making. He also spent time in New York, traveling there from Paris. In 1953, Hamaguchi moved to France for the second time and started to work in color mezzotint technique. At the Tokyo International Print Biennale in 1957, he won the award of the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo), and participated in the Sao Paolo Biennale of the same year. This was followed by further successful entries at the Biennales of Ljubljana and Krakow.

In 1981, Hamaguchi moved to San Francisco, and the following year won the Grand Prix of the Northern California Print Exhibition. Hamaguchi’s inventive approach to color mezzotints garnered him a mention in the Encyclopedia Britannica’s article on “Mezzotint” as “its most distinguished mid-20th-century advocate.” Hamaguchi’s delicate and tranquil work continues to be highly regarded in the art world, as well as he counts as one of the foremost modern copperplate printmakers. He returned to Japan in 1996, and passed away in 2000 at the age of 91.