Colnaghi & Banda Present Held in Space: Celebrating Women-Led Art and Design

Colnaghi and BANDA Gallery are proud to present HELD IN SPACE: Celebrating Women-led Art and Design, a poetic installation that reimagines Colnaghi as a living, breathing home in which artworks and inhabitants enter into dialogue within a setting of intimacy, memory, and conversation.

HELD IN SPACE marks the beginning of an innovative partnership with BANDA Gallery, combining Colnaghi’s historic tradition of sourcing exceptional masterpieces with BANDA’s acclaimed vision for luxury interior design.

At the heart of the exhibition are more than twenty works by women artists, assembled in conjunction with Women Artists Art Week. From the candid tranquillity of Gwen John (1876–1939), to the effervescent surreal ink drawings of Leonor Fini (1907–1996), and the spirited compositions of Françoise Gilot (1921–2023) and Lotte Laserstein (1898–1993), each work reveals the intimate and enduring presence of the female voice in art and its lasting influence on visual culture.

BANDA Gallery’s curated furnishings are woven throughout the exhibition as complementary storytellers. Works by pioneering women designers, including Charlotte Perriand, Lina Bo Bardi, and Grace Prince, appear across the rooms, many partially veiled in soft cloth as though rediscovered from forgotten estates. This gesture of wrapping and unveiling evokes objects in transit, preserved through time, echoing the fragmented ways in which history often survives through fabric, memory, and material traces.

HELD IN SPACE is an exhibition in which legacy and modernity coexist within a dreamlike environment. Both celebratory and reflective, it meditates on women’s creative legacies, the tactile intimacy of home, and the enduring resonance of artworks shaped by human hands.