Communing with nature. The art of Hiroshi Ōnishi | by Prof. Hans B. Thomsen

Hiroshi Onishi (1961, Shikoku Island, Japan - 2011), was an associate professor of Oil Painting at the Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts), where he graduated in 1989. At a young age, Onishi strove to discover himself outside the confines of his own culture and learned the foundations of European academic oil painting. In 1992, he went to Nuremberg, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts for five years. This extended stay in the medieval German town, the hometown of Albrecht Dürer, enabled Hiroshi Onishi to engage intensively with Northern Renaissance art, a passion he had since childhood. However, he interpreted this art in a very personal way, which is visible in his early self-portrait paintings that, in many respects, echoed Jan van Eyck’s portrait of a man in a red turban.

Despite his academic education and being confronted with abstract Western art, Onishi felt the urge to return to his Japanese roots, feeling the belonging to the artistic tradition and the philosophy of Shintoism and Zen Buddhism. At the beginning of the period in Germany, his works were filled with motifs. But, by the end of this period, Onishi leaned more towards a minimalist style, exploring the traditional characteristics of both Chinese and Japanese art “yohaku”, consciously leaving space empty on the painting. These features are evident in his first series created between 1996 and 1997, titled “Waterscapes”. They are small paintings of varying sizes depicting traditional motifs such as mountains, rivers, and aquatic figures like koi. Applying thin layers of washi paper on top of each other, Onishi created many small, hand-cut, pyramid-like structures on which he painted these delicate representations with ink.

In 1998, he returned to Japan and became a lecturer in the Oil Painting Department at Tokyo University of the Arts. At this time, in his paintings Ōnishi avoided using drying oil and instead opted for a “glazing technique”, employing aqueous emulsions like glue solution, egg tempera, Arabia gum on chalk to create a layered structure on the surface. This particular method generated an optical illusion in which the darker hues seemed delicately veiled, evoking the artistic style found in Japanese painting during the Meiji Era.

After a decade experimenting with materials, both Eastern and Western, he encountered lapis lazuli in 2002 on his scientific research trip to Kabul. This precious gem became the focal point of his art, marking the pinnacle of his artistic career, and infusing his works with extraordinary depth and beauty. Onishi combined the 14th-century recipe developed by Cennino Cennini with the Eastern tradition of “nihonga”, coined during the Meiji period. An important feature of this Japanese technique is the exclusive use of natural pigments. The artist manually extracted 16 shades of luminous blue from the gemstone, obtaining a color range from pale to intense ultramarine. What makes him a truly fascinating artist is not only his mixed technique, but also because he was the first Japanese painter to use the precious pigment lapis lazuli.

Hiroshi Onishi’s work also evokes a philosophical value. His art is an interpretation of a fundamental Buddhist doctrine known as “sunyata”, a concept that signifies emptiness and void. This philosophical core translates itself into less figurative representations, reinterpreting the motifs of water and the creatures that inhabit it. The beautiful shades of the lapis lazuli color enhance the presence of waterscapes. Water, with its enigmatic allure and its realm of creatures, emerged as a recurring motif in Onishi’s oeuvre. It reflects his deep connection to this element and its profound mysteries. To those who knew him well, Hiroshi Onishi was an open man, who used to talk about many things. Yet, his art remains enveloped in an aura of mystery. A meditative contemplation of nature, which he observed as a devoted fisherman.