Isobe was born 1936 in Tokyo and joined Q Ei’s Demokrato Art Association already during his high school days. He worked with lithographs early on. In 1962, Isobe participated in the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition with relief works of connected “Wappen” (germ. emblem, heraldic plates). He was awarded at the 1963 Japan International Art Exhibition. In 1966, he moved to the United States where his primary interest shifted towards architecture and city planning. In the following years, Isobe engaged in eco-planning projects in the US as well as in Japan. The Meguro Museum of Art held a retrospective in 1991. More recently, Isobe has returned to working as an artist.

While the fervently Wappen-producing Isobe in his early days was enmeshed in a circle of artists such as Masuo Ikeda, Ay-O, Q Ei and other young avantgardists, and in a way contributed to a budding Japanese variant of Pop-art, he had since the 1970s completely turned his back on art. This was around the time when I made my first steps in the art world, and Isobe seemed like a legend to me. The man had disappeared but there were all these works. And they, for sure, did not start to look old even half a century later.