![\"Elena](\"https:\/\/gyotakulevante.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/bb-plugin\/cache\/elena-di-capita-circle.jpg\" "\\"elena-di-capita\\"")
\n\t\tElena Di Capita was born in 1985 in Chiavari, Genoa. After graduating from the Art Institute, she specialized in restoration in 2007 and graduated in Archaeological Heritage in 2014. She has been involved for a long time in the restoration of painted surfaces in Italy, France, and Yemen, as well as in archaeological missions in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Her passion for painting, particularly Japanese art, led her in 2018 to experiment with the fish print technique, gyotaku, a technique developed in Japan two centuries ago that “transfers reality to paper.” Her works have been highly successful; she was the first in Italy to specialize in this style, and in 2019 she opened her own studio in Lavagna, dedicating herself fully to her artistic career. She also collaborates abroad to promote gyotaku culture, particularly in Turkey and Tanzania. In 2023 he went to Japan to learn the takuseikai technique from master Masatsu Matsunaga and also studied the taku-hon technique in depth.<\/p>\n
Her first solo exhibition, titled In the Footsteps of Artemisia, dates back to 2019, followed by numerous exhibitions in Italy and France. In 2023, during the Genoa Science Festival, titled Impronte (Imprints), one of her works was chosen as the symbolic image for the event’s entire communications campaign. She also participated with a gyotaku performance and exhibited in a solo show at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa.<\/p>\n
He collaborates with Italian research institutes (IRBIM CNR) and NGOs and his works have been used in sector publications and as book covers, including the latest, “Alzarsi all’alba” by Mario Calabresi.<\/p>\n
In 2025 she was invited by MAZDA Italia to participate in the Eccellenze italiane Mazda event at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence and collaborated with Paramount on the set of MOBLAND, a series by Guy Ritchie.<\/p>\n
On December 2025, she travels to Peru to work on her project Nomade Peruviana, aiming to create a work depicting Ligurian emigration to this South American nation.<\/p>\n
A solo exhibition takes place in Lugano, Switzerland, at the Caslano Fishing Museum starting from March 2026. She exhibits in Valle Maira at\u00a0 ANCIUE Festival in collaboration with Mall\u00e8 Museum in Dronero (CN).<\/p>\n
Elena Di Capita works on various types of Japanese paper and creates gyotaku images, primarily using black, the color of the traditional gyotaku in Japan with which fishermen would print images of particular, noteworthy creatures they’d caught. In other works, however, the artist employs the takuseikai technique, which forbids the use of black, but instead uses blended colors directly on the fish to imitate their plumage. The artist respects the Japanese tradition that prohibits retouching on the print, with the exception of the eyes, which are painted. Only for the anchovies does she deviate from the “rule,” both by diluting the inks differently to convey the impression of different distances, and by adding cast shadows, which allow for a sense of depth, lending strength and impact to her language.<\/p>\n
Moving away from the Eastern tradition of depicting a single, immobile and evanescent fish, and focused on achieving technical perfection, Elena Di Capita composes a multitude of imprints in an absolutely original way, creating instead works full of energy and movement, creating her unmistakable shoals of anchovies, a tribute to her homeland, Liguria, which have made her famous in Italy and abroad.<\/p>\n
The artist begins with an ideal crystallization of reality to then infuse movement into his images, transporting the viewer along with them and symbolically representing the energy that pervades existence, the wave that carries the paths of life, the harmonious rhythm of music. The delicate traces that immortalize the fish are thus charged with great visual power, each anchovy a force that creates the choral movement.<\/p>\n
Di Capita’s artistic research, initially rooted in the Gyotaku tradition, has recently undergone a significant expansion. The artist has progressively expanded her scope of investigation to include impressions drawn from different kingdoms-animal and non-animal-exploring organic forms that, through printmaking, acquire symbolic and relational value.<\/p>\n
In these new compositions, elements that do not share the same natural habitat are brought into dialogue: fish with insects, jellyfish emerging from mushrooms, works included in the Bestiario Alchemico collection, or the series of anchovies with flowers in the Florilegio series. Impossible juxtapositions become visionary geographies, suspended spaces in which the imprint acts as a threshold between the real and the imaginary. Print thus takes on a role of poetic mediation: gyotaku is no longer simply a testimony to the existence of an organism, but a device for evoking an elsewhere.<\/p>\n
The works take the form of metaphysical scenes, composed of heterogeneous presences that silently converse, suggesting new possibilities for coexistence and interpretation of life.<\/p>\n
Worthy of note is her work with bycatch, that is, non-target fish species that end up in fishermen’s nets, the byproducts of fishing, thus creating a major waste problem and, therefore, an ethical issue. At a time when bycatch is one of the most significant challenges for marine biodiversity, the artist transforms its bodies into visual testimonies.<\/p>\n
Her prints reveal fish and organisms that the general public never encounters at the fishmonger’s, thus assuming an almost didactic role: showing what the sea holds on the margins of attention, inviting us to recognize the complexity and fragility of marine equilibrium. The works thus become poetic and conscious traces, capable of giving voice to life forms otherwise destined to disappear into silence.<\/p>\n
Elena Di Capita is one of the very few people in the world who dedicate themselves exclusively to the gyotaku artistic technique, with an original interpretation of Japanese aesthetics and an essential and timeless language, which narrates humanity in its continuous flow and the absolute beauty of imperfection.<\/p>\n
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