After graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts, Rakuko Naito moved to New York with Tadaaki Kuwayama in 1958. Since then she has been promoting her artistic activities based in New York. Naito experienced every detail of the important art movements that flourished in 1960s, including Optical Art and Minimal Art. In Europe and America, she is recognized as one of the rare artists who keep such spirit alive in the present day.

Naito created a series of Optical Art works in 1960s, and Flowers series in 1970s and 1980s. From the second half of the 1990s, she has been creating a series of works in which natural materials such as paper, wood and cotton balls are geometrically arranged in a frame. These works succeed in eliminating narrativity while keeping an element of Western avant-garde; and at the same time, they present the solemn existence of the pure and clear sense of traditional Japanese beauty.