Akiko Horio

Born: Tokushima,1937
Period of Membership in GUTAI: 1968-1972

Horio studied at the High School of Nursing attached to the University of Tokushima Faculty of Medicine and worked as a nurse before beginning to create works on her own in 1962. In 1967, she exhibited at the Gutai New Artists Exhibition, after which she immediately became a member. The box-shaped works which she had been working on around this time are divided by gentle curved lines and emphasize the contrast between fixed and irregular forms.
From the 1970s, she also began to use mirrors frequently, and the size of her pieces became smaller as the years went on. According to Horio, “works should be silent”. Her “untitled” works do not lend themselves to being used medium for communicating anything and are instead open to a variety of interpretations. Her work is nothing less than ”my ’construction of the world’ using lines, colors, and materials”.