Acclaimed Japanese painter Hiroshi Senju received the fourth annual Isamu Noguchi Award in a ceremony held Tuesday at sculptor Noguchi's museum in New York.

Architectural designer John Pawson of Britain also received this year's award. His projects encompass buildings -- from private houses to commercial showrooms -- as well as art spaces, stage sets, a monastery and yachts.

The Isamu Noguchi Award is presented annually to two artists who share Noguchi's sense of innovation and cultural exchange. Past honorees from Japan are architects Tadao Ando and Yoshio Taniguchi, who won last year and in 2015, respectively, and artist Hiroshi Sugimoto who received the inaugural award in 2014.

Senju, 59, is known for his sublime, often large-scale images of waterfalls and cliffs that combine a minimalist visual language rooted in Abstract Expressionism with ancient Japanese painting techniques.

He is widely recognized as one of a handful of contemporary masters of the 1,000-year-old nihonga traditional Japanese style of painting, using pigments made from minerals, ground stone, shells and corals suspended in animal-hide glue, the museum said.

Senju was the first Asian artist to receive an Honorable Mention Award at the Venice Biennale in 1995. His work is included in numerous international collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Museum of Art in Osaka.