Born in 1932 in Nagoya, Japan, Kuwayama graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1956. He studied nihonga, a traditional form of Japanese painting on paper or silk that uses naturally derived pigments and focus on outlines and tonal articulation. Together with his wife, artist Rakuko Naito, he came to the United States in 1958. After settling in New York, Kuwayama abstain from both traditional Japanese painting and Abstract Expressionism, which dominated contemporary art at the time. Instead he experimented with reductive painting, producing canvases with colored fields of paint in horizontal and vertical compositions, such as Untitled: red and blue (1961).

Since the 1960s Kuwayama’s work has continued to be perceived as a quiet and spiritual experience. In the 1990s, Kuwayama began the series Projects, which consist of works of identical color and dimension, their installation determined by the light and architecture of the gallery space.