20.10.2026

Our archival research continues. Here is the photo we are sharing with you, from left: Renato Cardazzo, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Aiko Miyawaki, Nobuya Abe.

The photo was taken at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice in 1965, during the opening of the Nobuya Abe exhibition.

Giuseppe Capogrossi, Aiko Miyawaki and Nobuya Abe were leading artists in the stable of Carlo and Renato Cardazzo in the 1960s. They traveled between Milan and Venice to plan their solo and group shows. We often find them photographed together at exhibition openings, and in the same catalogue of the historic Edizioni del Cavallino.

Aiko Miyawaki (Tokyo 1929 – 2014) was a Japanese painter and sculptor.
Miyawaki moved to Milan in the late 1950s. The turning point in her artistic career came in Milan, when Nobuya Abe introduced her to Enrico Baj. During her time in Milan, she began working with brass tubes, transforming these materials into sculptures that explore the themes of light and reflection. Visit her exhibition, organized by Studio Gariboldi in November 2024.

Nobuya Abe (Niigata, 1913 – Rome, 1971) was a Japanese painter and photographer. He settled in Italy in the 1960s, coming into contact with the European art scene, marked by the presence of artists such as Capogrossi, Manzoni, and Fontana. His poetics focus on three fundamental elements: matter, structure, and light, in a journey that led him toward geometric abstraction. Visit his exhibition, organized by Studio Gariboldi in October 2020.

Coming soon: Capogrossi. Immagini di una storia. 1952-1972

© Studio Gariboldi
© Archivio della Galleria del Naviglio

Studio Gariboldi, Palazzo Cicogna, corso Monforte 23, 20122 Milan
Info: press@studiogariboldi.com
Whatsapp: +39 352 2900 596

06.10.2026

The backstage of an exhibition involves a long phase of archival research. While preparing our upcoming show, we found an unpublished photograph of Capogrossi and Totò together, part of the precious documents in the Galleria del Naviglio archive. The two are probably on the set of Totò Diabolicus, during a break: Totò, in fact, is not wearing his full stage makeup, which also includes a fake beard. Among the film’s locations is Villa Zingone in Rome, frequented in the 1960s by artists, architects and art critics. To furnish the interiors of film productions of those years, directors often borrowed works of modern art from galleries or from the artists themselves. It is reasonable to assume that Capogrossi had come to visit Steno (a friend of his gallerist at the time) or to supervise the placement of one of his works.

The picture was taken by a set photographer (Giovanni Battista Poletto was working at the time) or by a photojournalist. These witnesses allow us to reconstruct the history of the artists we love.

©️Studio Gariboldi
©️Archivio della Galleria Del Naviglio

01.10.2026

“The most important years of my life were those spent pursuing my inner images.” This insight from Carl Gustav Jung is the starting point for a journey into what art and philosophy can do for us: open up questions, give shape to what we cannot yet put into words, and transform the way we look at ourselves and the world.

Curarsi con l’arte e la filosofia (AnimaMundi Edizioni) offers a path through images, works of art, philosophical thought, and autobiographical practices, teaching us to pause, observe, and listen to what is happening within us.

Chiara Mirabelli guides the reader in an exploration of their own inner life, showing how aesthetic experience and reflection can become tools of knowledge and care. Not care understood as a response to illness, but as attention to one’s own existence, its fragilities, its desires, and its still unexplored possibilities.

This book is for those who feel the need to look at their life from another perspective, and for those who seek in art and thought not only beauty or answers, but opportunities to question themselves and to change. It is an invitation to recover wonder, creativity, and amazement, and to recognize in our inner images a form of knowledge. A journey within ourselves, so that we may return to looking outward with different eyes.

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!