Painter and printmaker Hideo Nishiyama was born on May 7, 1911, in Kyoto, Japan. At age 14 he was given private painting lessons with Suisho Nishiyama, and in 1936 he graduated from the Kyoto City Specialist School of Painting. He began exhibiting regularly at state-sponsored exhibitions in Bunten and Teiten, and became a member of the Seikosha painters' collective. He didn't begin publishing color woodcuts until after the Second World War, at which point he worked with Unsodo publishing house.

Nishiyama took a position at the Kyoto Gakugei University in 1954. In 1958 he was awarded the Ministry of Education Prize, and in 1961 he he was awarded the Japan Art Institute Prize. He was honored with election to the Japanese Art Institute in 1980.

Hideo Nishiyama died in Japan in 1989. A retrospective of his work was held in 2009 at the Kagoshima City Museum of Art, titled "20 Years After his Death: Hideo Nishiyama".