HIROSHI ŌNISHI

EARLY YEARS & STUDYING IN GERMANY
Hiroshi Onishi was born in 1961 on Shikoku Island, the smallest of four main islands in Japan. All his life was connected with water, fishing, and drawing.

A significant incident during his childhood awakened his interest in Western culture: the 1970 World's Fair in Osaka. As a kid, he took painting lessons, then went to Suido Bata Art Academy in Tokyo, a preparation school for art universities. He entered the Oil Painting Course at Tokyo Geidai University of Arts only on his 5th try at the entrance examination. He submitted the self-portrait painted in the tradition of Northern Europeans. In 1985 Onishi was a young man. But he depicts himself as an older gentleman in his 40ies with a white turban on his head, just like a portrait of a man in a red turban by Jan van Eyck. In the folds of the turban lies a redfish koi, a decorative version of Amur carp. Those days, an object that came in contact with him was himself - and fishing - the root of his mind. During his education “he painted nudes just as Northern European and Flemish Primitive masters. But still fish-like sliminess in the feel of the female nude. After completing of master’s degree and a year as a research student, he gave all time to painting and fishing near Ginzan Lake in Oku-Tadami.”

His thesis work “The Trout”, 1987 was purchased by the Geidai University, and another work, “The Salmon”, 1989 by the Daiwa Bank. During this phase, he oriented his work strongly toward the European Renaissance, in which his human forms are evocative of Albrecht Dürer or Matthias Grünewald, in combination with his conceptions of fish and water.

Longing for European aesthetic sense, which is put in one word as “Oil painting” he went to study in Germany in 1992. He wanted to study oil painting in the quiet atmosphere, verso Düsseldorf, Berlin, or even Paris. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nürnberg for 6 years under Günter Dollhopf. The atelier of the class was placed in the 13th-century Wenzelschloss. During his studies, he met his wife when she was a student there too. This was the time of curtly painted fish or female faces it as lurking and wriggling emotions in his mind.

RETURN TO JAPAN
First Hiroshi Onishi painted acryl on European paper, then painted on rice paper “wash” in a technique drawn from traditional Japanese painting (brought from a small rice grower near Lake Ginzan). His experimentation with paper, acrylic, Indian ink, fabric, and pigments became a quest for his Japanese roots. “I realized that I am Japanese”.

In 1998 the artist returned to Japan and began to work as an oil painting instructor at his Alma Mater in Tokyo. Martina, his wife came with new-born Mondo in her arms. After returning to Japan he didn’t paint with drying oil but simply with aqueous emulsions tend to be used for ground and underpainting (Untermalung) of paint layer (Malschicht) - such as glue solution, egg tempera, Arabia gum, etc. on chalk or emulsion ground. It is a technique to adjust the tone of color by constructing a stratified structure. Usually, glazing is done by applying a transparent dark color on the lower light color, but It can be done vice versa - opaque light color on the lower layer dark transparent color. This gives an effect, that the lower dark color was dimly covered with a vale and then it appears milky-light-like optical gray. This technique was interpreted as “Schummern” by Max Doerner. It would be close to the technique used by Japanese painters in the Meiji Era for spatial expression and ridiculed as a blurred style. It seems he was asked to consider his self-identity and forced to make a revolution to face the tradition of Japanese aesthetic sense.

During this period he rediscovered his origin in belonging to the Eastern artistic tradition and the philosophy of Shintoism and Zen Buddhism. He worked on the interpretation of ‘sunyata’, a Buddhist concept of emptiness or voidness. His paintings become less figurative, reinterpreting the motives of water, its inhabiting creatures, and deities. There is a family story, that one day while being in a studio and working on another water deity Son Mondo fell into a pond on an ice-cold day in January and was rescued last minute. Later this work was called “The lord of the Water Goes into the Water”. It is presented at our exhibition.

LAPIS LAZULI
In 2003 the family Onishi welcomed their 3rd child Mitsuhi. It was a very happy time for the family. “My life is a mixed technique and my family is a mixed technique”. With family, he spoke German, because it brought him relaxation and happy memories from Germany.

After he became a full-time lecturer, he traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan as one of the members of the 3rd Cultural Support Researching Party with Ichiro Sato, his colleague. There were exploded airplanes and even the hotel where they stayed was partly bombed. There he met the lapis lazuli ore. He was a man who believed in intuition and he did refining (the method to sort out the pigment of high purity from the natural ore) and hammered out his original prescription and refining method.

Honruri - is medium in this case, meaning lapis. Ruri - means the ancient blue. Together with the Japanese company Holbein Ltd., he developed a premium quality lapis lazuli watercolor. As a Professor in the Department of Oil Painting, Technique, and Material at the Tōkyō Gedai he taught the traditional production of the lapis lazuli pigment in the tradition of Cennino Cennini from 1300 A.D. Ōnishi did not stop experimenting with the blue pigment and went on adding it into ceramic glazes to color tea ceremony objects with lapis. He was the first to succeed in this technique.

Onishi was mesmerized by the deep blue color of the stone. He thought of it as “It is a new color that the Japanese have never seen” as cited in a newspaper interview. He brought as much as he could to Japan after the trip to experiment with extraction methods, with the ultimate aim of using the pigment himself for his artwork. Every time he needed more lapis, he bought them from traders in Afghanistan by going there himself. Interestingly enough, no early examples of ultramarine can be found in Japanese art. However, synthetic ultramarine was developed in France in 1828 and this seems to have been exported to Japan during the nineteenth century by Dutch traders in Dejima. In addition, a ground blue glass pigment brought in from China was also used as a substitute for aquamarine in Japan. So when Onishi states that “a Japanese has never seen this color,” he is right in a historical sense, because before the relaxation of travel outside of Japan in the late nineteenth century, no Japanese had probably seen aquamarine and lapis lazuli with his or her own eyes.

LAST YEARS
In 2007 Hiroshi Onishi became an Associate Professor 2007 - heavy responsibility as a key member of an academic affairs committee, and cared a lot about students. His free from university and family time, he devoted himself to chars in Biwa Lake (a fish from the trout and salmon family). and went wishing quite often. On one of such trips in March 2011, shortly after the sad news about the Great Japan Earthquake, Hiroshi Onishi died from cardiopulmonary arrest. The accident happened near Chikubu Island and the artist was discovered by a son of the chief priest.

Father said that he initiated Hiroshi into fishing. Since he was a little boy - he was fishing and drawing. Swallowed by “Water Nymph” just like Loreley of Rhine River.

The last exhibition was in 2011 in Galerie Omotesando in Shibuya. He introduced his 12 works, which were later installed in Tenjyu-an temple, one of the sub-temples built for high priests in Nanzen-ji.

He was also a gourmet, a good cook, and a perfect host. In the last years, Onishi was dressed in white from head to toe. A special gift of Mr. Onishi to differentiate the nuances of color and its shades influenced all his life, from extracting 16 shades of lapis lazuli blue to making dressing into a coded form of private communications. First meeting with Frau Onishi - black jeans, black pullover, and canary yellow jacket. In Germany - red, orange, white and blue. Returning to Japan - light colors and painting - abstract, various shades of grey, light blue, and white.

Every artwork presented is an open window into the creative mind of Hiroshi Onishi and his "Grey Period".

The experience of Japanese artist Hiroshi Onishi has shaped a unique artistic identity, where European and Japanese cultures are closely intertwined. His path in the art world began with a strong desire to cross the confines of Japanese tradition, immersing himself in the art of the Northern Renaissance. In Nuremberg, he remarkably deepened these insights, presenting a graduating work that echoes Jan van Eyck's portrait of a man with a red turban. However, the result is a wholly personal interpretation, highlighting his creative originality.

Upon his return to Japan, his art underwent a significant transformation, exploring and merging both European and Japanese techniques, giving rise to abstract paintings dominated by shades of grey, azure, white, and ochre. This particular phase in Onishi's career is referred to as the "Grey Period", which started around the year 2000. The marine world and the creatures that inhabit it stand as a constant theme throughout his entire body of work, manifesting in different ways. This is already evident in his earlier self- portrait mentioned earlier, where a Koi fish replaces the red turban. However, the Grey Period is not merely a contemplation of waterscapes but also an exploration of materiality.

This concept traces back to his university studies at the Tokyo University of Arts, where he earned a Master's degree in Oil Painting, Techniques, and Materials. Onishi, in fact, built an academic career within the same university and the Department of Techniques & Materials. During this time, the artist explored the synergy between European and Japanese techniques, refining a hybrid artistic language that aimed for the highest quality. He employed aqueous emulsions such as glue solution, egg tempera, Arabia gum on chalk, generating a veiled effect. This technique extends the image evoking the air, transcending the mere representation of water, and inviting the viewer to perceive the atmosphere surrounding each painting and the tranquility of nature. Onishi creates paintings where the materiality of floating aquatic and vegetal motifs is palpable, namely
dense, pasty, and liquid.