Giovanna Rigattieri is the creator of the research project and the instructor of the hands-on course “Meditative Art.” An artist and teacher of yoga and meditation, she holds a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and earned a Level I Master’s degree in“Contemplative Studies: Meditation Practices from Tradition to the Contemporary” from the University of Padua. 

She attended courses at Brown University for two years, studying Thai Samatha meditation, dynamic Qi Gong meditation, and Zen meditation in depth. She holds two certifications as a yoga teacher, in the Hatha and Yin Yoga traditions, respectively. 

She currently collaborates with the University of Padua as an instructor in the Level I Master’s program in Creative Arts Therapies, focusing on resilience, and withthe Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. She offers private, personalized meditation and yoga classes and has been exhibiting her paintings both in Italy and internationally since 2004. 

“Religion and art are therefore different names for the same experience: an intuition of reality and identity”

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Śhiva