Painter and printmaker Risaburo Kimura was born in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, in 1924. Before pursuing art, he attended the Kanagawa Instructor's School (now the Yokohama National University) and, in 1959, he studied philosophy at Hosei University. While at Hosei he took extracurricular art courses from Tetsuzo Tanikawa, and he decided to become an art critic. This was short lived, however, when he realized he wanted to become a painter. He joined the Sozo Biiku Movement (Society for Creative Art Education), centered around creative artistic freedom and led by artists such as Teijiro Kubo and Ay-o.

In 1964, he traveled to the United States to open an atelier in New York City, where he began focusing on printmaking, especially silkscreen. He became known for his themes of cities and city life, creating the series "Great Cities of the World" in the late 1960s, featuring abstracted, colorful depictions of fictional major metropolitan areas executed in both silkscreen and lithography. With over 400 images, the series took three years to complete. 

Kimura exhibited in both group and solo shows at the Brooklyn Museum; the Guggenheim Museum; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; among others. Special exhibitions included the Biennial of Prints in Tokyo; Modern Prints of Japan, Brussels, Belgium; Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico Coty; and the Japanese Arts Festival at the Guggenheim.

His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; Kyoto City Hall, Japan; Oklahoma Art Center; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; National Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Museo La Tertulia Cali in Colombia, South America; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Kimura died in New York in 2014.