I met Horiki as a child in 1970 in a mountain hotel. He knew my father Gino Balzola (1927-1983) as an artist and then, from mutual esteem, a long and fruitful friendship was born between them. I was immediately attracted by his proud and silent personality; he measured his words and was still learning the Italian language having recently arrived in Italy. What most impressed my attention as a child was the kindness and elegance of the ways, certainly linked to his Japanese origins and the nobility of his family, but also a part of his extraordinary aesthetic and ethical sensitivity. In a world of coarse behavior, Horiki’s lifestyle immediately stood out.
I also remember when the young seasonal workers of the hotel found out that he was black belt in judo and amicably challenged him. He did not want to exhibit his martial skills but finally agreed to do it, mostly so they would stop insisting. The game ended quickly when Horiki laid everyone down on the mat. To my childish eyes a mythical aura surrounded this strange character, who was so unpredictable and different from everyone I had known. I asked him why he had decided to move to Italy and he simply replied, “for the love of Italian art”. Despite the age difference, he was interested in the things I said and drew, giving me advice and ideas to think about. Thus a friendship was born among us too, which matured over time and deepened particularly when, after high school and during my university years, I began to deal seriously with art criticism. I had been a student of two luminaries of art and thought, Gino Gorza and Pino Mantovani, who were also his close friends, and I remember many evenings and art trips together, sometimes with other cherished artist friends in common like Giuseppe Garimoldi, Virgilio Bari, Federico Chiales, Paolo Guasco, or gallerists like Giancarlo Salzano. The exchanges of ideas, and artistic and philosophical innovations, in our circles were so intense that I felt the need to take notes and translate into writing the resulting reflections.
So it was that in the second half of the 1980s Gino Gorza, Pino Mantovani, Giuseppe Garimoldi and Horiki were among the first to ask me to write critical texts to present their exhibitions. Coincidentally after a few months, in 1987, I presented in the catalogue the two exhibitions of Gino Gorza and Horiki at the Galleria Giancarlo Salzano in Turin. The cycle of paintings on the True Cross, inspired by the frescoes of Arezzo by Piero della Francesca, had deeply impressed me. A new mode of vision of painting was opened which was truly ‘epiphanic’. It revealed a beyond, beyond time - for the deep dialogue between two artists of different eras - and beyond space - his painting seemed to me in fact an echo of Byzantium, but a Byzantium seen from the East and not from the West as I was used to seeing it. There was a materiality (of which Horiki illustrated the complex, patient and meticulous creative process) which led me to a tactile perception - with closed eyes - of its vibrant surfaces alongside a visual appreciation. Horiki’s work did not only attract the eye but transformed - as though casting a spell - the gaze into an immersive experience.
Immersion in the image but also in the concept. In fact, his work spoke to many connections with my philosophical readings of that time, from Nicola Cusano to Zeami Motokiyo, from Elémire Zolla to Albino Galvano, and I found in it an extraordinary synthesis between Western and Eastern painting, between hermeneutics and metaphysics. Our dialogue from that moment became a game of resonances and recalls, in an affinity that also had affective roots in childhood and family memories and was uninterrupted even if time and physical distance (in the 90s I moved to Rome where I lived for more than twenty years) had made it more sporadic. I remember giving him my first stories to read, and receiving penetrating observations and literary advice (especially on Japanese literature of which I knew little), until he was very happy when I asked him to illustrate with his drawings a visionary story of mine dedicated to him and his work ('The Passage of the Forgotten Gods', in Andrea Balzola and Pino Mantovani, 'Storie di pittori', Fògola editore, Turin 2002, pp.115-130).
The visits to the magnificent house where Horiki had moved, bringing his studio with him, were interludes which meant a great deal to us both, and I regret that those meetings were not more frequent. The distance was offset by phone calls or email messages that kept us updated with each other and, in recent years, by social media (Facebook), which Horiki approached with a lively and engaged curiosity, with an almost childlike freshness, that in my eyes suspended his old age to make him timeless.
I didn’t think he could die, and in fact for me he is still here: I feel him close by as a protective presence, like a character in the Nō Theatre.
Andrea Balzola
Accademia Albertina, Turin
