18.09.2026

Giovedì 24 settembre alle ore 17.00

Thursday, September 24 at 5 pm

There are places we pass through, and places that pass through us. For Gianni Montieri, the train is both: not merely a means of transport, but a space where memory, desire, and landscape intertwine. This is the spirit behind Non era un mostro strano (66thand2nd, 2025), a journey through today’s Italy told from the train window, a privileged vantage point on the world. What to look at, and above all how to look: these are the questions at the heart of the dialogue between Montieri and Mario De Santis, two poets and friends.

Gianni Montieri, poet and writer, is the author of Non era un mostro strano (66thand2nd, 2025) and Ampi margini(Liberaria, 2022).
Mario De Santis, poet and journalist for the Gedi Group, recently published Corpi solubili (Samuele Editore, 2023).

The book corner is curated by Scatola Lilla.

Admission free, reserve your seat here:
press@studiogariboldi.com

17.09.2026

On September 16, the exhibition Hard Line Women opened in Los Angeles, hosted by the Nonaka-Hill gallery. Among the featured artists is our own Aiko MiyawakiAiko Miyawaki, exhibiting some of her sculptures alongside the works of internationally renowned artists such as Atsuko Tanaka and Tomie Ohtake, as well as installation artist Kazuko Miyamoto, previously exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

16 September – 7 November 2026
720 N. Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038, Nonaka-Hill

15.09.2026

Katsumi Nakai, the artist who brought origami into Milanese Spatialism.
The New York Times, article by Max Lakin, July 9, 2026.

“In 1964, the artist Katsumi Nakai left Japan for a trip planned through Europe and the United States – “following the sun,” he called it. He got as far as midday. Captivated by the mix of classical masterworks and experimental ferment in Milan, Nakai relocated his family and stayed for 30 years, entering that city’s circle of progressive artists: Enrico Baj, Edmondo Bacci and Lucio Fontana, whose Movimento Spaziale, or Spatialism, challenged painting’s limitations as a fixed surface meant to be approached. Fontana slashed and poked holes in the canvas. Nakai’s solution, both gentler and more radical, was to allow a painting to approach a viewer (…). Nakai’s approach wedded the Western avant-garde to traditional Japanese sensibility and craftsmanship. His works synthesized origami; kiri-e, the meticulous Japanese art of paper cutting; and butsudan, the domestic cabinet shrines that honor departed relatives, with the altarpieces he encountered wandering into Milanese churches. He created his own language. (…)”

13.07.2026

If L’Homme au chapeau melon (Man in a Bowler Hat) René Magritte’s 1964 canvas, embodies the mystery of identity and the tension between what we see and what remains concealed, then the work Untitled by the Japanese artist Katsumi Nakai, 1967 acrylic on shaped wood, reveals one, or perhaps many, possible identities.

At first, it appears as a neutral man in a bowler hat, perfectly defined by the contours of its wooden silhouette. Then, with a simple gesture, it unfolds into space, blooming like a flower in its rightful season. Suddenly, it turns red, then reflects itself in a striped pattern, offering a second way of seeing, and perhaps a second personality.

Works of art are like dreams: they are meant to be observed, experienced, and followed. Let this be an invitation for the summer, to open yourself to the world and to new experiences. As art reminds us, there is always a time to return to a state of stillness and, for a while, gently draw the curtain closed.

Katsumi Nakai, Untitled, 1967, acrylic on shaped wood.

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Studio Gariboldi
Corso Monforte 23, 20122, Milan
Info: press@studiogariboldi.com

01.07.2026

“Long before the art world became globalized, Lucio Fontana had already forged a deep dialogue with Japan.”

We value art historians because we believe that it is History that gives Art its oxygen, restoring visibility and justice to movements, artists, galleries, and museums. That is why, for years, we have been committed to bringing greater clarity and order to the stories and historical contexts we work with.

Stefano Turina, a meticulous and highly respected art historian, has been working alongside us in the study of Japanese artists in Italy during the post-war period (artists such as Aiko Miyawaki, Katsumi Nakai, Key Hiraga, and the exhibitions Aiko Miyawaki, Sculpture 1965-1975; Italy-Japan, Japanese artists in Milan since 1960). We closely follow his research for universities, museums, and foundations.

In 2024, he took part in the International Study Conference Lucio Fontana. Origins and Imagination (5-6 dicembre 2024, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venezia). The conference proceedings are now available online. Among the contributions his essay, A Quiet and Fervent Revolutionary: Lucio Fontana and Japan, which offers new perspectives on the dialogue between Italy and Japan and on the international dimension of Lucio Fontana’s career.

You can download the conference proceedings free of charge from the website of the Lucio Fontana Foundation.

We highly recommend reading them!

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.