Aiko Miyawaki is a Japanese artist born in Tokyo in 1929. She was a sensitive woman with a strong, determined character, focused on achieving her artistic goals. Her life was filled with significant encounters: Nobuya Abe and Yoshishige Saito in Japan, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, Lucio Fontana in Milan, Man Ray in Paris, and Sam Francis and Jasper Johns in New York.
Her career took off in 1957 at the Yoseido Gallery in Tokyo, but the pivotal moment came in Milan when Nobuya Abe introduced her to Enrico Baj. Miyawaki exhibited in numerous international galleries, including Galleria Minima in Milan (1961), Tokyo Gallery (1962), and André Schoeller Galerie in Paris (1962).
Aiko Miyawaki drew inspiration from minimalism, conceptualism, and the philosophy and aesthetics of East Asia. She began as a painter in the late 1950s, spending the next decade between Los Angeles, Milan, Paris, and New York. After returning to Japan in 1966, she focused on sculpture, working with polished materials to explore the intersections of metaphysics, cosmology, and science.
After her show at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York in 1964, Miyawaki returned to Tokyo between 1965 and 1966. It was during this time that she started working on her brass tube sculptures, now being presented in a solo exhibition at Studio Gariboldi.
In 1966, during the “From Space to Environment” exhibition at the Matsuya Department Store in Ginza, she met renowned architect Arata Isozaki, who later became her husband. Isozaki, known for designing the skyscraper “Il Dritto” in Milan, shares a vision with Miyawaki’s works, especially in the affinity between the 209-meter-high building’s 24,000 sqm of facades and 4,500 glass cells and her artistic creations.
Miyawaki’s large outdoor sculptures are installed in museums around the world, including the Hakone Open-Air Museum, Biwako Ohashi Sculpture Plaza in Shiga, Plaza Tower and Town Center in Costa Mesa, California, the Olympic Ring in Barcelona, the esplanade of La Défense in Paris, and the Gori Collection in Santomato di Pistoia, Italy.
Since 1994, a series of her works can also be found in the new Nagi Contemporary Art Museum, designed by Arata Isozaki.
Aiko Miyawaki passed away in Tokyo in 2014.
Aiko Miyawaki, #14, 1966, Brass plates assembled with profiles. Internal lighting. © Studio Gariboldi