15.06.2026

Between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, Paris and Milan played a pivotal role in the artistic development of Key Hiraga and Aiko Miyawaki. After settling in Paris in 1965, Hiraga created his celebrated series The Elegant Life of Mr. H, a visionary and ironic body of work that captured the vitality of urban life while reflecting his engagement with the French movement of Narrative Figuration. During the same years, Miyawaki worked between Tokyo, Milan, and Paris, developing the brass and steel sculptures for which she became internationally known, including the works produced between 1966 and 1969.
While Hiraga explored modernity through vivid, imaginative narratives, Miyawaki expressed it through refined sculptural forms shaped by light and space. Although their artistic languages differed, both artists found in Europe an important environment for exchange with contemporary avant-garde movements, while maintaining a distinctly Japanese sensibility. Their works offer two complementary perspectives on the postwar experience of space and time, a dialogue that has also emerged through the recent exhibitions dedicated to both artists by Studio Gariboldi.

Discover: Key Hiraga’s room

Discover: ITALY-JAPAN. Japanese artists in Milan since 1960

05.06.2026

The exhibition Anti-Action: Artist-Women’s Challenges and Responses in Postwar Japan concluded in February 2026 at the The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT). What remains of this important project is the valuable exhibition catalogue published by the museum, which serves as an essential reference for scholars of postwar Japanese art and for collectors alike.

The exhibition offered a critical reassessment of the work of a group of Japanese women artists active between the 1950s and 1960s, challenging historical narratives that had long diminished or overlooked their contributions. Alongside internationally celebrated figures such as Yayoi Kusama and Atsuko Tanaka, the exhibition brought renewed attention to a generation of women whose work remained on the margins of artistic discourse for decades.

Among the artists featured, Aiko Miyawaki occupies a particularly significant position. Although she had been active on the international art scene since the 1960s, her work only began to receive broader institutional recognition from the 1990s onward. Anti-Action reaffirms her importance within the experimental practices of postwar Japan, highlighting her original contribution to the development of abstraction and to artistic investigations centered on space, light, and immaterial phenomena.

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition restores visibility to a generation of women artists whose contributions are now undergoing a necessary and increasingly wide-ranging reappraisal.

Anti-Action: Artist-Women’s Challenges and Responses in Postwar Japan
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT)
16 dicembre 2025 – 8 febbraio 2026.

04.06.2026

Key Hiraga’s room
1970’s Works
7 May – 16 July 2026

Hands seek, welcome, brush against, hold, tremble, heal, mend, support, protect, intertwine, reveal, and ultimately let go, transforming every gesture into a silent form of relationship, attention, and care.

In the paintings of Key Hiraga, hands seem to express a yearning toward the other. In an age marked by distance and mediation, the act of touching and grazing another body takes on meanings different from those it held when the works were first conceived and created. For today’s viewer, it becomes the search for presence and contact.

The artist’s figures appear to entrust to their hands what their faces can no longer convey. Through gesture, the body attempts to transcend the boundary that separates individuals, imprisoned within appearances and imposed roles. Within proximity, there may still exist the possibility of mutual recognition.

The grasping hands, in their unease, also evoke desire and obsession, yet at the same time a fragile longing for belonging. In this way, Key Hiraga transforms the body into an emotional language and touch into a poetic form of connection.

Picture: Key Hiraga, Untitled, 1971, oil on canvas, details, 130 × 165 cm.

The exhibition Key Hiraga’s room is part of the ITALY–JAPAN, Japanese Artists in Milan since 1960 project, held under the patronage of the Japanese Consulate General in Milan.

Monday – Friday
11:00 am – 1:00 pm | 2:00 – 6:00 pm
Saturday by appointment

Info: press@studiogariboldi.com
www.studiogariboldi.com
Corso Monforte 23, Milano

29.04.2026

Key Hiraga’s room
1970’s Works
7 May – 16 July 2026

As part of the project “Italy–Japan: Japanese Artists in Milan since 1960”, it will be possible to visit Key Hiraga’s Room, a new solo exhibition bringing together dazzling and psychedelic works, conveying the painterly energy and visionary imagination of the artist. The works on display feature the Paris of the Pigalle district, Hiraga’s main source of inspiration. We are in the mid-1960s, and the bustling nightlife of the French capital is translated onto his canvases into ironic and theatrical scenes populated by imaginary figures, enigmatic men, and sensual women. The body lies at the center of a continuous visual game, in which eyes, mouths, and ears transform and mutate, creating an immersive, almost cinematic experience, with some surprises for visitors who encounter the works up close.

In 1972, the Italian public encountered for the first time the exuberant works of Key Hiraga (Tokyo,1936 – Hakone, 2000), an eclectic protagonist of the postwar Japanese art scene. In 2015, after nearly half a century, Studio Gariboldi dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him, presenting a selection of works from the series The Elegant Life of Mr. K, created between the 1960s and 1970s. And now, we have the pleasure to present Key Hiraga’s Room, the second solo exhibition that Studio Gariboldi dedicates to the Japanese artist.

Pics: Key Hiraga, Untitled, 1972, oil on canvas, details, 65 × 54 cm.

The exhibition Key Hiraga’s room is part of the ITALY–JAPAN, Japanese Artists in Milan since 1960 project, held under the patronage of the Japanese Consulate General in Milan.

Monday – Friday
11:00 am – 1:00 pm | 2:00 – 6:00 pm
Saturday by appointment

Info: press@studiogariboldi.com
www.studiogariboldi.com
Corso Monforte 23, Milan

28.04.2026

Thursday 21 May, at 5pm

Paolo Linetti, an expert in iconography and symbolism, will guide us on a fascinating journey through the images evoked in the works of Lucio Passerini, artist, engraver, and typographer.

At the heart of the talk will be the relationship between sign, material, and support, with particular attention to the use of Japanese papers, chosen by the artist for their tactile quality and their ability to receive the imprint of printmaking as a sensitive and living space.

In Passerini’s practice, in fact, every element—from the paper to the typographic character—emerges from a deep dialogue with the content, in which materials and forms are conceived as an integral part of the creative process.

Under the patronage of the Consulate General of Japan in Milan.

Free admission!
We look forward to seeing you—reserve your spot here:: press@studiogariboldi.com

20.04.2026

On Thursday, April 23 at 5:00 pm, in the gallery spaces, writer and journalist Paolo Di Stefano and artist Tullio Pericoli will be present.

At the center of the meeting is the book Una giornata meravigliosa (Feltrinelli) by Paolo Di Stefano, an intertwining of lives that brush against one another: ordinary men and women with their fears, desires, and fragilities. Among them is also a journalist who enters into dialogue with an artist; together, they reflect on the meaning of making art and on the relationship between reality and representation.

The dialogue between Paolo Di Stefano and Tullio Pericoli thus becomes an opportunity to reflect on how words and images portray people, the human landscape, and the stories of our time.

The event will be moderated by Elisabetta Bucciarelli.

Free admission!
We look forward to seeing you, reserve your spot here: press@studiogariboldi.com