Tokyo-ga
Artist
de Santillana, Laura
(Italian, 1955 - 2019)
Date2009
OriginItaly
MediumHand-blown and shaped glass
Dimensions12 1/8 × 9 × 1 7/8 in. (30.8 × 22.9 × 4.7 cm)
ClassificationsGlass
Credit LineGift of Carolyn K. and Richard F. Barry III
Object number2017.114
Label TextLaura Diaz de Santillana (Italian, born 1955)
Tokyo-ga (left) and Tokyo-ga (Aqua Orizzonte) (right)
Hand-blown incalmo-technique, hot-worked, fumed, 2011
Gifts of Carolyn K. and Richard F. Barry III
While the artist’s ancestry is rooted in the venerable Venetian glass house of Venini, her own creative path has always been fiercely independent and experimental. Trained by the famous graphic designer Massimo Vignelli, her work draws on influences as varied as modern painting and sculpture, nature, and Eastern philosophy. The Tokyo-ga series captures layered, polychrome fields in thick, flattened panels that are as much sculpture as painting, architectural mass as fluid glass canvas. References to the Japanese capitol’s visual environment, invoked in the title, inform them as much as the expressive canvases of the American color-field painter Mark Rothko.
The panels were executed in Venice by Simone Cenedese (b. 1973), a master of the art of incalmo. This technique allows for the intervention of chance during the artistic process and renders every object a unique work of art.
Status
On view
