“Inner Calligraphics” at Studio DFB

The Studio of Alberto Di Fabio presents Claudia Palmira: Inner Calligraphics

April 16 – May 2, 2026 | Studio DFB, Rome
Monday – Sunday 10–20 by appointment infostudiodfb@gmail.com
Curated by Mattia Andres Lombardo and Anamarija Runtic

The Studio of Alberto Di Fabio is pleased to present Inner Calligraphics, an anthological exhibition of new and recent work by Rome-based New York artist and art director Claudia Palmira. The show opens by invitation on April 16, 2026, from 6 to 9 pm, and runs through April 30.

Inner Calligraphics brings together four distinct bodies of work spanning Sumi ink, wood, and prints, a twenty-year arc of inner exploration conducted through Rome. The works navigate story and meaning through layers and strokes, moving fluidly between digital and tactile mediums as between worlds.

The exhibition presents three series of calligraphic abstractions: Prompts, Calasetta, and Principles, alongside Ovid, three large-scale works on wood; a single Sumi ink work, Beauty; and Iconics/Poetics, a sequence of approximately fifty small prints on photographic paper. The show is installed as a progression from black and white into color.

Alberto Di Fabio is one of Italy’s most internationally recognized contemporary artists, known for paintings that bridge art and science, luminous, intricate works exploring natural forms, biological structures, and the cosmos. Represented by Gagosian Gallery, his work has been exhibited in major institutions worldwide. Studio DFB, his gallery space in Rome’s Pigneto neighborhood, is a center for experimentation, research, and cultural exchange, built on the conviction that art is a language of encounter and dialogue. The gallery’s street, via Raimondo Montecuccolo, was made famous by Rossellini in his film Roma Città Aperta.

Claudia Palmira works across painting and design. Her work has been exhibited at the U.S. Embassy Tri Mission Gallery and the Circolo degli Esteri. Her studio, Rome Design Agency, produces creative projects for prestigious global clients, among them the art direction of Laudato Sie, the exhibition of 800-year-old Franciscan manuscripts at Palazzo Braschi, Rome. She is the founder of a line of artistic silk scarves sold at the Met Opera, and is the author of Micro Daily Practice.

Inner Calligraphics is her most comprehensive exhibition to date.

Studio DFB
Roma, Via Raimondo Montecuccoli 28a
Opening: April 16, 2026 by invitation, 6–9 pm
Exhibition dates: April 16 – 30, 2026

Visit the Studio by appointment.

Curatorial Essay

“Nothing maintains its appearance, and nature, the renewer of things, draws forms from forms. Nothing, believe me, perishes in the entire universe, but everything varies and changes its face.”

Ovid
Metamorphoses
Book XV, 252-255

The central teaching of Ovid’s Metamorphoses lies in the idea that everything changes, nothing remains fixed or succumbs forever (omnia mutantur, nihil interit). The poem is not only a collection of myths, it is a compelling and profound reflection on the fluidity of the universe and of human identity. An idea that has profoundly shaped the entire work of Claudia Palmira, an artist born in New York, and now based in Rome.

Inner Calligraphics is the title chosen for her solo exhibition at Studio DFB, an inner calligraphy reaching outward to seize the eye. Works that seek empathy, something we are tragically losing.

An anthological and mutable exhibition bringing together different techniques, from sumi ink on wood to digital art – works that move fluidly between meaning and its metamorphosis toward vibrational marks. Claudia Palmira’s works trace the symbolic journey a word can make, transforming into a symbol not to be deciphered, but to be recognized and claimed in the very moment it is seen.

An inner calligraphy that begins as evocative writing and dissolves into abstract, unconscious graphism. Where one word yields, another approaches and melts away.

Sumi ink, dense and abundant, paints the word beauty, a symbol-word that radiates and shatters across all of Claudia’s work. Words multiply; interweavings of signs come alive on paper in a dynamic metamorphosis that recalls the elegant graphism of Japanese writing, and above all the Dibujos Escritos of Argentine artist León Ferrari. Manuscripts that speak to an invisible, interior writing, created to be read with the third eye, that of higher awareness, gesturing toward a poetics of surrealist origin.

Ovid is the name of Claudia’s three large works on wood. A tribute to the kinetic force of Ovidian metamorphosis, works where what transforms is first and foremost color, impatient to saturate the wonder of myth with the change of nature.

Nothing dies, everything moves, like Claudia’s breath of lightness in a heavy time.

A calligraphy of the soul that moves like an inner wave, giving life to a graphic flow that could extend, hypothetically, to infinity, a mantra in which to lose oneself.

—Mattia Andres Lombardo