Born in Tokyo in 1932, Ushio Shinohara comes from an artistic family. His father a poet, his mother a nihonga painter and doll maker, Ushio continued the artistic legacy and attended Tokyo University of the Arts in 1952. In 1957, Ushio left the university to pursue his education independently, pouring over international works of art criticism and avant-garde theorists. Ushio entered the 1960s as a force of the Japanese avant-garde art scene with his action paintings. He gained particular notoriety for his abstract boxing paintings. Attaching sponges to his boxing gloves, Ushio would saturate the gloves with paint and punch his way across a long paper or canvas. In 1963, Ushio Shinohara discovered a deep and lasting inspiration in the American avant-garde on the pages of Art International and promptly began his Imitation Art series (1963).