September – October 2016
The lightness of the brush on the paper, the predilection to constant exercise, the harmony of shapes are the distinctive characteristics of elegance and beauty. Only someone who was born and raised following the Eastern traditions has been able to transform these features into art. The Japanese among them all.
From 1870 onwards, with the advent of the industrial revolution, Japan started to open up slowly to the Western culture. Between the two world wars and in the postwar period, the young Japanese artists began to learn about different art movements both in Europe and in America. Inspired by German expressionism, abstract and informal art they joined some of the important avant-garde movements. Distorting and transgressing the conventional ideas of their tradition, they were able to build a new personal and collective identities. The elegance overlapped the intensity, and vice versa, the force of the color found a surprising placement in spite of the composure of the pictorial composition.
Studio Gariboldi presents JAPAN, a group exhibition of Japanese artists who have experienced this cultural journey from the late fifties to the early seventies.
The twenty protagonists who have been chosen for this exhibition belong to different generations and have a defined and personal artistic style, both from expressive and from practical point of view. However, there is a transparent thread which links the works together. The consistency of this connection can be explained by three main factors: the centuries-old artistic tradition, the art de vivre that characterizes Japan and defines its essence and the peculiar Eastern aesthetics which is perceptible in each work.
