Laura de Santillana: Echoes of Her Gaze: Impressions of Tokyo and Kyoto in Glass

New York, NY – Ippodo Gallery proudly presents Laura de Santillana: Echoes of Her Gaze, Impressions of Tokyo and Kyoto in Glass, the artist’s second posthumous solo exhibition in New York. A curation of over 25 glass artworks evoking the dichotomy of Tokyo’s neon lights and subdued glow of Kyoto’s aesthetics, on view from May 15 – June 29, 2024. Representing the later years of her career, this collaboration between the de Santillana Estate and Ippodo Gallery includes artworks traveling from Venice and those which exhibited exclusively in Japan. Deeply inspired by the ingenious craftsmanship of Japanese architecture, this series of glass tablets draws together the vibrant colors that de Santillana saw in Tokyo’s bustling nightlife districts with the traditional modesty of Kyoto, where she felt a natural fondness of ancient Japanese culture analogous to the grand history of Venice.

Memories of You

— Shoko Aono, April 2024

Numerous memories with Laura sit in my mind, but one of the more recent ones comes from 2018. 

There she walked, barefoot on the tatami mats in a traditional Japanese house, holding her signature glass in her hands. It was a joint exhibition of textiles and glass art that we organized in the theme of the moon, hosted at the historic residence of Kondaya Genbei in Kyoto. She moved slowly and quietly, step by step. She loved Japanese architecture and materials—which were emulated in her work—such as paper, silk, indigo, and gold and silver leaf.

She reveled in the space and atmosphere of her surrounding in Kyoto, as if absorbing the world for the first time like a child; I could see all this in just her gaze. 

Back in Tokyo, driving between the dizzying buildings in a taxicab, she laughed while listening to our conversations in what was to her a foreign language; "Japanese is like music. I don't know what it means, but I can imagine what it means.”

Always she was open and free with life at large. Yet, she possessed an inner world, as deep as an abyss, that none could see. The walls of her home in Venice, from the first floor to the second, was a library. She filled her mind with all sorts of knowledge: literature, art, philosophy, poetry, culture, architecture, and science. She said one day, as I lamented something ugly, “Shoko, of course I see beautiful things, but also those things that are ugly, too. How we see is what is important; that’s where I process life into art.”