Painter, calligrapher, collagist, and printmaker Hidetaka Ohno (or, Ōno Hidetaka) was born in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan on January 20, 1922. He first studied painting at the Kyoto Municiple School of Painting (now the Kyoto Municiple College of Fine Arts), graduating in 1944. Following the Second World War, he began studing Western styles such as Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, which had gained popularity as foreign exports became more common. These he would combine with the traditional styles and techniques he learned in his youth. 

Ohno founded the group Pan-Real in 1958, by which time he had established a style of his own that included collaging textured fabrics to his paintings, which he called dongoro. He traveled to the U.S. to participate in his first American exhibition that year, the Carnegie International art exhibition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He soon became more well-known for his works outside of Japan, and frequently exhibited through the U.S. Europe. He was approached by poet Cid Corman to collaborate on two projects, publishing "Clocked Stone" and "Cool Gong" in 1959. This would lead to other collaborations with Corman and other poets, and Corman would later write a biography for a catalogue of Ohno's works. In 1970 one of Ohno's paintings was purchased by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. 

Hidetaka Ohno died in Japan in 2002. Many of his works are held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.