Kandinsky and Italy @ MA*GA Museum, Gallarate, Italy - Kandinsky e l'Italia @ Museo MA*GA, Gallarate

Kandinsky and Italy

Kandinsky e l'Italia

MA*GA Museum, Gallarate

Museo MA*GA, Gallarate

November 30, 2025 - April 12, 2026

In italiano qui sotto

ENRICO PRAMPOLINI

Composizione, 1950

Oil on masonite

MAGA Museum Collection, Gallarate

From 30 November 2025 to 12 April 2026, the MA*GA in Gallarate (VA) hosts a large retrospective revolving around the figure of Vassily Kandinsky, one of the pioneers of abstract art.

The exhibition focuses on the centrality of the Russian master's work and thought in relation to the European scene and, in particular, to the great season of Italian abstraction that developed between the 1930s and 1950s.

The exhibition recounts the birth of abstract art and its evolution in Europe and Italy, whose influences are still alive and well in contemporary art today. This journey through masterpieces from the MA*GA Museum and the Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro, enriched by prestigious loans from public and private collections, showcases works by artists such as Paul Klee, Enrico Prampolini, Mario Radice, Atanasio Soldati, and Emilio Vedova.

Curated by Emma Zanella and Elisabetta Barisoni, designed and produced by the MA*GA Museum and the Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro (VE).

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Dal 30 novembre 2025 al 12 aprile 2026, il MA*GA di Gallarate (VA) accoglie un’ampia retrospettiva che ruota attorno alla figura di Vassily Kandinsky, uno dei pionieri dell’arte astratta.

Curata da Emma Zanella ed Elisabetta Barisoni, progettata e realizzata dal Museo MA*GA e dalla Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro (VE), la mostra dal titolo Kandinsky e l’Italia si concentrerà sulla centralità dell’opera e del pensiero del maestro russo in relazione alla scena europea e, in particolare, alla grande stagione dell’astrattismo italiano che si è sviluppata tra gli anni trenta e gli anni cinquanta del Novecento.

Il percorso espositivo racconterà la nascita dell’arte astratta e la sua evoluzione europea e italiana, i cui esiti sono ancora oggi vivi e presenti nel linguaggio artistico contemporaneo, attraverso capolavori provenienti dai due musei, arricchiti da prestigiosi prestiti di collezioni pubbliche e private, di artisti quali Paul Klee, Enrico Prampolini, Mario Radice, Atanasio Soldati, Emilio Vedova.

MUSEO MA*GA

MA*GA MUSEUM

Fondazione Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea ‘Silvio Zanella’

Via Egidio De Magri 1, 21013 Gallarate (VA)

www.museomaga.it

European Ceramics @ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - "Making It Modern: European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection" Exhibition

Making It Modern

European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

June 16, 2025 - January 4, 2026

Making It Modern: European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art highlights more than 60 ceramic works dating from the 1880s to 1910s that showcase the aesthetic, conceptual, and technical experimentation of ceramic artists in Europe. Working in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, these artists sought to break from the past by developing new, distinctive modes of making. With a renewed interest in the natural world as a source of artistic inspiration, they experimented with decoration, forms, and ideas to make their art modern. The exhibition features a selection drawn from a gift of approximately 80 ceramics given to The Met by scholar Martin Eidelberg in the years 2022–24.

“This exhibition brings into focus a pivotal moment at the turn of the century when ceramics were central to the exploration of modernism across Europe and across the fine and decorative arts,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer of The Met. “The incredible originality and creativity of these works offer clear evidence of the dramatic changes in ceramic design and production during this period. Thanks to the generosity of Martin Eidelberg, an extraordinary collector and prolific scholar, we can better appreciate these truly outstanding objects within their larger historical context.”

The years in which the Eidelberg ceramics were produced coincided with the emergence of the popular Art Nouveau movement in which artists brought abstracted forms from nature into their work. Few of these pieces, however, align closely with the common conception of that style. Instead, these ceramics reflect the desire for individual artistic expression and the enormous creativity that make this period such a rich chapter in European ceramic history.

Another formative influence on this new style’s development came from the interest in Asian ceramics, particularly Japanese stoneware. While European fascination in the arts of Asia was long-standing, this interest had a new focus: the artisanal experimentation emphasizing the sculptural form of the vessel and the abstract application of glazes. This aesthetic of imperfection was revelatory to European audiences.

Among the exhibition’s key objects are an extraordinary large circular plaque produced at the Rozenburg factory in the Netherlands with a painted decoration that has no historical precedents; a gourd-shaped vase by the ceramic artist Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat that reflects the new focus on nonfunctional, organically inspired shapes with abstract glazes largely determined by the firing process; and an openwork vase seemingly formed of overlapping nasturtium leaves and stems produced by the celebrated Danish factory of Bing & Grondahl. All of these objects are a manifestation of the desire of artist-potters and ceramic factories at the end of the 19th century to create new modes of expression that allowed them to explore highly original forms and methods of decoration.

Sarah E. Lawrence, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in Charge of The Met’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, said, “This exhibition captures a remarkable moment in the history of ceramics that centers the decorative arts in the formation of early modernism. European ceramic artists intentionally sought distinctive modes of making their art modern, though innovations of form and experimentations in material, shape, technique, and glazes.”

Guest curator Jeffrey Munger added, “The aim of this exhibition is to highlight the creativity of ceramic artists in Europe at the end of the 19th century. A common goal was to produce new forms and types of decoration that reflected the dawn of a new century, and the variety of means that were explored in this pursuit demonstrate the remarkable inventiveness and innovative spirit of artist-potters at this time.”

Making It Modern: European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection is curated by Sarah E. Lawrence, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in Charge of The Met’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and guest curator Jeffrey Munger.

The exhibition is accompanied by an issue of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin.

Making It Modern: European Ceramics 

from the Martin Eidelberg Collection

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 

Volume 82 | Number 4 | Spring 2025  

Lawrence, Sarah E., Martin P. Eidelberg, and Jeffrey H. Munger

48 pages, 44 illustrations, 8.5 x 11 in

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

www.metmuseum.org

Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin @ Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin 

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

March 30 – June 22, 2025

The Kimbell Art Museum presents the exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. This exhibition brings together more than seventy paintings and sculptures from the collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Germany’s distinguished modern art museum. It traces the German experience in the visual arts from the last years of the German Empire, World War I and the liberal Weimar Republic that followed to the rise of National Socialism and Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, and World War II. Paintings and sculptures by artists including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Hannah Höch, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Käthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter, and Christian Schad show how modern art played an important role in the discourse during these critical decades in twentieth-century political history and how politics, at the same time, influenced the visual arts. Most of the works on view in this exhibition have never before been shown in the United States. 

“This is the first special exhibition ever held at the Kimbell devoted to painting and sculpture in Germany during the fraught, tumultuous first half of the twentieth century,” said Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “We are grateful to the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin for the opportunity to provide this experience in Texas.”

The exhibition leads visitors through the great shifts in art and politics that took place between 1910 and 1945 in six thematic sections, beginning with Expressionism. In the first decade of the twentieth century, artists challenged the status quo of German art, painting and sculpting roughly drawn and vividly colored works. The Expressionists’ works were political in their objection to the conservative taste of their times, and specifically that of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Many German Expressionist artists were given prominent places in German museums in the wake of the first World War but were later often banned under Hitler. This gallery includes Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Self Portrait with a Girl, 1914-15, and Emil Nolde’s 1909 Pentecost, among paintings by other influential artists.

The next section features the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), a movement that typified the modern style of the 1920s. These artists rejected the seemingly crude brushwork and dissonant colors of Expressionism, seeking to adapt to a new post-war social order in the liberal climate of the so-called Weimar Republic, the democratic government that was ushered in at the end of World War I and lasted until Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933. Their paintings were often marked by careful draftsmanship, sober brushwork, and a kind of hyper-realism that gave a modern interpretation of the traditions of German Renaissance art. This section includes works by artists who may be less well-known to American audiences but who have long been celebrated in Germany and recognized by artists and historians worldwide. Among them are Kate Diehn-Bitt, Kurt Günther, Franz Radziwill, and Christian Schad, whose 1928 painting Sonja is among the most famous icons of the movement. 

From this rediscovery of realism, museum visitors move to galleries featuring the International Avant-Gardes that found favor in the 1910s and ‘20s, when modern art from across Europe was exhibited in Germany. At this time, more than ever before, art from abroad was featured in museums and commercial galleries. In this exhibition, portraits of three influential art dealers join works by the foreign artists they promoted: Afred Flechtheim by the painter Otto Dix; Herwarth Walden by the sculptor William Wauer; and Heinrich Thannhauser, in the painting by Lovis Corinth from the Kimbell’s own collection. This section of the exhibition includes works by such European artists as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Oskar Kokoschka, and Marianne von Werefkin. 

The exhibition next reveals ways that Modes of Abstraction entered and influenced German art in the years between the world wars. For example, the Cubism of Picasso, Georges Braque, and Léger exerted a strong influence in Germany, on painters such as Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Gabriele Münter, and Georg Muche, whose works are displayed here. Feininger, Klee, and Muche were on the faculty of the Bauhaus, the famed art school, along with Wassily Kandinsky, and Oskar Schlemmer, also featured in this section of the exhibition. 

Politics and War demonstrates how artistic movements engaged directly with modern society and, by extension, with political issues. Some artists did so quite explicitly: George Grosz, in his famous 1926 Pillars of Society, blatantly ridiculed the establishment—political, military, and religious. The works in this gallery plot the course of events that led from Germany’s defeat in 1918 to the rise of militant nationalism in the 1930s, to a second world war, and to the Nazi atrocities that shocked nations worldwide. Examples include Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s mournful bronze sculpture Fallen Man, and Horst Strempel’s magnum opus, Night Over Germany, a denunciation of the Nazis’ barbarism in the form of a Christian altarpiece.

The exhibition concludes with an epilogue titled Before and After. This gallery includes works by some artists who had been exiled, who had been labeled as “degenerate,” or who were otherwise grappling with the political and humanitarian realities of post-war Germany, from the point of view of their art before the war and their history in the post-war era. Among the works seen in this concluding chapter of the exhibition are Max Beckmann’s melancholy 1942 Self Portrait in a Bar and Salvador Dalí’s Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas, painted in exile in Beverly Hills, California, in 1945. 

“The works in this exhibition are powerful, masterful,” said George T. M. Shackelford, deputy director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “And the stories that they tell about their turbulent times are gripping.” 

Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin has been organized by the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, in cooperation with the Kimbell Art Museum. The curators of the exhibition are Dieter Scholz, George T. M. Shackelford, and Irina Hiebert Grun.

Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945 

Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

The richly illustrated catalogue accompanying the exhibition is edited by George T. M. Shackelford, Irina Hiebert Grun, and Joachim Jäger, with major contributions by Dieter Scholz, Irina Hiebert Grun, and George T. M. Shackelford, and commentary on each work by a wide variety of German scholars. 

KIMBELL ART MUSEUM

3333 Camp Bowie Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas 76107

kimbellart.org

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Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie @ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Exhibition Overview

Monstrous Beauty 

A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

March 25 – August 17, 2025

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a major exhibition, Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie, which radically reimagine the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens. When porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s pervasive fantasies of both the East and the exotic along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race. This exhibition interrogates the ways in which this mutable, fragile material that shaped European women’s identities in the past also led to the construction of abiding racial and cultural stereotypes around Asian women. Shattering the illusion of chinoiserie as a neutral, harmless fantasy removed from the present, Monstrous Beauty casts a critical glance at inherited attitudes toward the style, exploring how negative stereotypes can be reclaimed as terms of female empowerment.

“Monstrous Beauty examines the multifaceted legacy of chinoiserie in 18th-century Europe,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “By illuminating the beauty of the object and the power of this art form to reflect, distort, and dictate the ways in which women's identities have been shaped and perceived across time, this thought-provoking exhibition invites viewers to engage with the past in new ways."

Iris Moon, Associate Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met, said, “Monstrous Beauty is both a story of enchantment and a necessary unraveling of harmful myths from the past—myths about the exotic—that have a hold over the present. It is time to retell the history of chinoiserie.”

Bringing together nearly 200 historical and contemporary works, from 16th-century European works to contemporary installations by Asian and Asian American women artists, Monstrous Beauty illuminates how chinoiserie ornament actively constructed cross-cultural ideas of female desire and agency. Much sought after as the embodiment of Europe’s fantasy of the East in the 1700s, porcelain accumulated a variety of associations over the course of its complex history. Fragile, delicate, and sharp when broken, it became a charged metaphor for women.

Contemporary works by Asian and Asian American women artists counteract chinoiserie’s stereotypes of exoticism by reclaiming the monstrous as a source of artistic possibility. The exhibition’s central atrium draws viewers in with an installation of Yeesookyung’s porcelain vessels, which feature broken shards mended and turned into dazzling monsters using the kintsugi repair method. Viewers themselves form an active part of the exhibition, joining the conversation between works from the past and pieces by contemporary artists, including a new commissioned work by Patty Chang. Abyssal is a full-size massage table made of raw, unglazed porcelain punctured by holes. After the exhibition closes, the table will be sunk in the Pacific Ocean. Instead of a sturdy horizontal support for a passive body, Patty Chang’s massage table is reimagined as an uncanny object with orifices. Patty Chang writes, “The holes put the body in doubt.” Raising questions about who or what we choose to see, the work recalls the unseen labor of Asian women spa workers, such as the six women killed during the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. Abyssal is also about the possibility of afterlives, regeneration, and transformation. Underwater, the table will serve as a deposit for growing coral.

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie: Exhibition Overview

Through a lens of curiosity and critique, porcelain reemerges here as a politically charged material that changed women’s lives. Five thematic sections introduce a mix of unexpected protagonists into the story of porcelain: queens, mothers, monsters, starlets, shoppers, and cyborgs. The style’s inventive language gave voice to novel tastes and identities, but also created lasting stereotypes that are difficult to break. The works of contemporary Asian and Asian American women artists are strategically positioned throughout the five thematic sections to rupture the illusion of a seamless continuity between past and present.

The exhibition begins with porcelain’s arrival in Europe via maritime trade. Porcelain appeared as strange and marvelous, when blue-and-white plates from Asia began arriving by sea in the 16th century. Merchants used porcelain from China as ballast, its weight offering ships stability in rough seas, before realizing they could sell it to eager consumers. Soon, shiploads of porcelain were being auctioned off in Europe by the late 1600s, even as anxieties around shipwrecks, warfare, and colonial violence surfaced obliquely in monstrous decorative motifs.

The next section explores how Mary II, Queen of England, developed an obsession with Asian ceramics in the late 1600s, giving birth to a taste for chinoiserie that influenced generations of women collectors in Europe. Mary’s main role as queen of England was to birth an heir. Instead, she gave birth to a taste for porcelain, which functioned as a surrogate body, a way to reproduce her presence by filling residences with bright ceramics, textiles, and lacquer panels. This feminine, personal take on chinoiserie contrasted with the French monarchy’s uses of the exotic to assert absolutist power.

Tea became ingrained in European culture, and the following section explores how this exotic beverage was turned into a potent symbol of civility that set Europe apart from the “savage” territories it exploited as well as the women who were in charge of cultivating a world of politeness in the home. Porcelain objects gained strong associations with women at a moment when public debates aired collective anxieties around their growing voices as consumers, tastemakers, and citizens.

Through the porcelain figurines that proliferated in 18th-century Europe, porcelain shaped notions of womanhood in unexpected ways. A shifting cast of goddesses, mothers, monsters, and performers, often clothed in gaudy costumes and adopting exaggerated poses, appeared. A starting point for later stereotypes surrounding the Asian woman, these figurines also put pressure on the fixed European vision of womanhood. These small, toylike objects paired with the period’s dazzling painted export mirrors serve as vehicles for reflecting on women’s self-perceptions—on how they wanted to see themselves versus the images imposed on them.

The exhibition closes with the long afterlives of chinoiserie into the 20th century and beyond. This was a period when modern Asian women directly grappled with the stereotypes created by the legacy of a historical style that conflated Asian femininity with traditional luxury objects and European consumption. The American imagination reshaped the style through film and photography. Like porcelain, these media provided a glossy substrate upon which fantasy images of the Asian woman could be projected and reproduced, and also contested.

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie is curated by Iris Moon, Associate Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Met.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition:

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Author: Iris Moon

256 pages, 172 illustrations

Paperback, 7 1/4" x 10 1/2"

ISBN: 9781588397928

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

www.metmuseum.org

Arte Fiera Bologna 2025 - International exhibition of modern and contemporary art - Sections, Curators, Galleries, artists, artworks, Awards

Arte Fiera Bologna 2025

International exhibition of modern and contemporary art

7 - 9 February 2025

Michelangelo Pistoletto

L'uomo nero, 1959

Oil on canvas, 120 x 120,5 cm

Courtesy Tornabuoni Arte

Salvatore Scarpitta

Drumer Brigade, 1963

Oil on canvas, bands and straps

61 x 61 x 12 cm

Signed, dated and titled on the back

Courtesy Studio Gariboldi

Valerio Adami

Park Avenue, 1969

Oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm

Courtesy Studio Gariboldi

Piero Dorazio

Stop, 1972/1975

Oil on canvas, 70 x 35 cm

Courtesy Galleria Tonelli

Giuseppe Penone

Terra su terra - Tronco, 2015

Bronze and terracotta, 220,5 x 85 x 50 cm

Courtesy the artist and 

Tucci Russo Studio per l'Arte Contemporanea,

Turin and Torre Pellice

Ph. Photo Archives Tucci Russo Gallery

Tony Cragg

Tommy, 2013

Bronze, 150 x 120 x 95 cm

Courtesy the artist and 

Tucci Russo Studio per l'Arte Contemporanea,

Turin and Torre Pellice

Ph. Photo Archives Tucci Russo Gallery

Giacomo Balla

Progetto arredamento verde, circa 1919

Watercolor, pencil and paint on paper

38,1 x 48,4 cm

Courtesy Bottegantica

Enrico Prampolini 

(1894 - 1956)

Bozzetto per la sala Esportazione, Padiglione del mercury

© Estate Prampolini

Courtesy Bottegantica

After celebrating a half-century of activity with a fantastic 2024 edition, marked by the return of large galleries and by many collectors, Arte Fiera looks to the future and confirms its growth under the leadership of Artistic Director Simone Menegoi and Managing Director Enea Righi. The exhibition’s traditional halls (25 and 26), reconfirmed for 2025, will showcase the Italian scene: current and past artists, new and established galleries, publishers, critics and institutions. A complete panorama of which Arte Fiera is a trusted interpreter, from post-war masters to emerging artists.

Arte Fiera Bologna 2025: Exhibitors, sections and curators

After the return of galleries such as Apalazzo, Laveronica, Lia Rumma, Lorenzelli, Franco Noero, Ronchini, and Sprovieri in 2024 (confirmed for 2025 as well), Arte Fiera 2025’s 176 galleries include important new returns, such as Gió Marconi, Magazzino, Raffaella Cortese and Tucci Russo, and first-time foreign galleries such as Herald St.

Pietro Consagra

Giardino bianco, 1966

Ferro verniciato, lamiere tagliate, curvate,

saldate verniciate, 38 x 51 x 2 cm, Edition of 5

Courtesy Archivio Pietro Consagra and Cortesi Gallery

Enrico Baj

Kiss me, I'm Italian, 1972

Coloured mixed technique on paper

78 x 66 cm. Edition: 100, X

Publisher: Studio Marconi, Milan

© Archivio Baj, Vergiate.

Courtesy Gió Marconi, Milan

Man Ray

La Fortune II, 1973

Colour lithographie, 55 x 75,5 cm

Edition: 90

© Man Ray Trust. Courtesy Gió Marconi, Milan

Andrea Romano

Cocoons, 2015

Slate, fiber, glass, rope, 35 x 25 x 25 cm

Courtesy the artist and Federica Schiavo Gallery

Photo Andrea Rossetti

Salvatore Arancio

Drip Drip, 2018

Glazed Ceramic, 34 x 43 x 44 cm

Courtesy the artist and Federica Schiavo Gallery

Photo Andrea Rossetti

Sang Woo Kim

Closer 020, 2024

Oil on canvas, artists frame, 26 x 26 x 3 cm

© Sang Woo Kim

Courtesy the artist and Herald St, London

Photo Andy Keate

Nicole Wermers

Proposal for a monument to a

Reclaning Famale! #9, 2023

Air dry clay and found objects

41,5 x 12,5 cm

© Nicole Wermers

Courtesy the artist and Herald St, London

Photo Jackson White

Arte Fiera’s Main Section, divided as always into post-war and contemporary art, will be accompanied by four invitation-only curated sections: Photography and moving images, Multiples, Pittura XXI, and, making its debut, Prospettiva, devoted to emerging artists, whether represented by new or established galleries.

Photography and moving images will be curated for the third year by Giangavino Pazzola, curator of Camera - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin. For the second year, Multiples will be curated by Alberto Salvadori, critic and art historian. Davide Ferri, critic and independent curator specializing in contemporary painting, has curated Pittura XXI since its first edition. The debut of Prospettiva is entrusted to Michele D’Aurizio, curator and critic working in Italy and in the United States.

Alongside the curated sections there will again be Percorso: not really a section, but an itinerary that thematically links some of the stands in the Main Section and in the curated sections. After two years devoted to artistic forms (Ceramics in 2023 and Drawing in 2024), Percorso 2025 will also concern the content of the works: in fact, the new theme is “Community.” The format's new theme for 2025 - on which the partnership with Ducati is renewed - is the idea of "Community," as expressed by "Community: not "I" but "we."

15 exhibitors in the section dedicated to publishing and 13 exhibitors in the section dedicated to institutions complete the list of 204 exhibitors at Arte Fiera 2025.

Robert Mapplethorpe 

Robert Sherman, 1983

Gelatin silver print, 63 x 61 x 3,5 cm

Courtesy Galleria Franco Noero

JR

La Nascita, Milano Centrale, 11 avril 2024

Color photographic print, laminated on dibond,

matte plexiglass, flush frame and American box

in walnut, 123 x 183 x 6,5 cm

Unique work

Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua

Mimmo Jodice

Venere Italica, Florence, 1990-91

Printed on baryta paper "True Black Fine-Art Giclée"

115 x 90 cm, Edition: 6

Courtesy the artist and Vistamare, Milan, Pescara

ph. Mimmo Jodice

Lucia Maria Patella

Perché il Sol ne riluca, 1991

Polaroid, 60 x 50 cm

Courtesy Galleria Il Ponte

Rosa Fosci

Double (Antonine Artaud), 1996

Composition of 9 polaroids, 10 x 10 cm each

Courtesy Galleria Il Ponte

Adelita Husni Bey

Parable #5, 2023

c-print, 101 x 131 cm

Courtesy the artist and Laveronica

Jonas Staal

94 Million Years of Collectivism, Karl Marx, 2023

Alu dibond 5mm, back printed black

109 x 174,6 cm

Courtesy the artist and Laveronica

Eva L'Hoest

One hundred staring sheep (diptych), 2024

Fine art print, 137 x 113 cm each

Courtesy the artist and Artopia Gallery

Installation view, Artopia Gallery

Photo Michela Pedranti

Arte Fiera Bologna 2025: Public program and special projects

Opus Novum #7: Maurizio Nannucci

Every year since 2019, Arte Fiera has commissioned an Italian established artist to create a work to be presented at the fair. The series, named Opus Novum, was inaugurated by Flavio Favelli, followed by Eva Marisaldi (2020), Stefano Arienti (2021), Liliana Moro (2022), Alberto Garutti (2023), and Luisa Lambri (2024). 

Maurizio Nannucci

Up/Down, 1984/2024

Red and blue Murano glass neon lights/

Timed ignition in three variants, 130 x 245 x 7 cm

Courtesy Galleria Enrico Astuni

Photo Renato Ghiazza

This year, the artist invited to create a new work for the fair is Maurizio Nannucci (b. 1939), an internationally renowned Italian artist since the 1960s. The author of sound and photographic works as well as artist books, Maurizio Nannucci is known above all for his use of the word as artistic material, specifically in the form of neon writing for site-specific installations. His contribution to the “Opus Novum” series is a work in edition: a high GSM paper shopper with YOU CAN IMAGINE THE OPPOSITE printed on its two main sides. A provocation – now more urgent than ever – to consider a radical alternative. Author, exhibition curator, collector, and even publisher of multiples (with Exempla, Zona Archives, and Recorthings, which he founded), Maurizio Nannucci views serial production as a way to affirm the preeminence of the idea of the individual action and as an opportunity for the democratic propagation of art. An approach shared by Arte Fiera as demonstrated by the creation of Multiples, a specific section for works in edition.

John Giorno

NASTURTIUMS FLAUNT TRUMPETS OF FIRE 

TEASINGLY DEMONIC, 2017-2023

Acrylic on canvas, 101,6 x 101,6 cm

Courtesy Thomas Brambilla

Neïl Beloufa

Silhouette 1, 2011

Wood, plastic, spray paint, 86 x 131 cm

Courtesy ZERO...

Photo ©  Filippo Armellin

Christian Frosi

Rice and Juice, 2007

Performative sculpture: 

shopping bags with rice and fruit

70 x 50 x 50 cm

Courtesy ZERO...

Rachele Maistrello

Black Diamond The corridor #1, 2024

Pigment print on Canson satin paper,

aluminium frame, 73 x 100 cm

Courtesy the artist and Artipia Gallery

Book Talk

The 4th edition of Book Talk, the series of conversations devoted entirely to art books, realized in partnership with BPER and curated by Guendalina Piselli, portrays the lively relationship between art and publishing, and its ability to stimulate great interest not only among professionals, but in the general public as well. A full calendar of presentations during the fair offers recently published works – essays, artist books, catalogs, and monographs – presented by critics, scholars, artists.

The Talks include Marie De Brugerolle, art historian and curator, in conversation with Vincenzo Estremo, theorist of moving images, presenting “Post-Performance Future. Method/e” (delpire and co edizioni), a research project analyzing the impact and legacy of performance art on the visual arts.

A double presentation creates a dialog between the book “Rematerialization of language 1978-2022” by Cristiana Perrella, Andrea Viliani, and Vittoria Pavesi (NERO Editions), and the monograph “Tomaso Binga. Euforia” by Eva Fabbris, Lilou Vidal, and Stefania Zuliani with Anna Cuomo (Lenz press), presented by Cristiana Perrella and Eva Fabbris.

Another double presentation compares “Skank Bloc Bologna: Alternative Art Spaces since 1977” by Roberto Pinto and Francesca Spampinato (Mousse), and “Anni Novanta. Arti visive, moda e design” by Alessandra Acocella and Valentina Rossi (postmedia books). The speakers will link the history of non-profit exhibition spaces in Bologna from 1977 to today with the Italian creative scene in the 1990s.

“On Patterns” (Mousse) by Adelaide Cioni will be an opportunity to focus on the research of this artist, protagonist of Arte Fiera’s performance program in collaboration with Fondazione Furla. She will talk with Ilaria Puri Purini, author of the book’s texts, and with Daria Khan, Jennifer Higgie, Jareh Das, Agnieszka Gratza, and Cecilia Canziani.

Piero Golia

Ancora Gora #13, 2023

Sumi ink on hotel letterhead paper

26 x 18,4 cm (unframed)

Courtesy the artist and Galleria Fonti, Naples

Giorgio Morandi

Natura Morta, 1956

Pencil on paper, 19,5 x 26,4 cm

Courtesy Galleria Sprovieri

William Kentridge

Cjiesa di San Francesco Saverio,

Palermo Cash Book Drawing I, 2023

Indian ink, charcoal and coloured pencil 

on found paper, 52 x 76,8 cm (not framed,

62,5 x 87 x 5 cm (framed)

Courtesy Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan, Naples

Mario Schifano

Incidente, 1964

Mixed technique on cardboard, 99 x 68,5 cm

Courtesy Galleria Tonelli

Libera Mazzoleni

Luca II, 49, 1977

Photography with typographic intervention

30,5 x 40,5 cm

Courtesy the artist and

Frittelli arte contemporanes, Florence

Lucia Marcucci

Un consiglio di moda, 1970

Collage on cardboard, 35 x 50 cm

Courtesy Frittelli arte contemporanes, Florence

Fondazione Furla

Arte Fiera renews its collaboration with Fondazione Furla for the live performance program curated by Bruna Roccasalva, the Foundation’s Artistic Director.

This year, the invited artist is Adelaide Cioni (b. Bologna,1976), who presents a performance created for the exhibition. Adelaide Cioni’s work regards the origins of the sign. Although her research covers a wide range of expressive forms - including painting, literature, music, and theater - her starting point remains drawing. 

At Arte Fiera 2025, Adelaide Cioni presents Five Geometric Songs, a performance in which abstract geometric motifs become the visualization of rhythm in space by means of five costumes designed by the artist and worn by five dancers who perform to original music by Dom Bouffard. The result of Cioni’s longtime focus on abstraction and color, on the origin of shape, and on the concept of patterns, the performance is both an evolution of a previous performance, Song for a Square, a Circle, a Triangle (2023) and a response to its specific location in Bologna: the Padiglione de l’Esprit Nouveau (1977), a faithful reproduction of an original design by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, exactly 100 years ago.

Thursday 6 February at 4, 5, 6 PM | Friday 7 February at 11 AM and 12 N | Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 February at 11 AM, 12 N, 1 PM - Piazza Costituzione, 11, Bologna

Bice Lazzari

Untitled, 1966

Acrylic and pencil on canvas, 25 x 25 cm

Copyright of the artist

Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery, 

London, Rome, New York

Nedda Guidi

Omaggio a Ebla [Homage to Ebla], 1981

Terracotta and oxydes, set of twenty

70 x 50 x 13 cm

Copyright pf the artist

Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery, 

London, Rome, New York

Agostino Bonalumi

Rosso, 1977

Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas, 140 x 140 cm

Courtesy Cortesi Gallery

Ai Weiwei

Estasi di Santa Cecilia (After Raffaello), 2024

Toy bricks, 228 x 152 cm 

Unique work

Courtesy AI WEIWEI STUDIO and 

Galleria Continua 

Ph. Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

Alberto Savinio

Nascita di Venere, 1950

Tempera on mansonite, 70 x 58 cm

Courtesy Tornabuoni Arte

Alfredo Piri

Senza Titolo, 2002

Plexiglass, steel wire, enamel and acrylic,

watercolour, watercolour paper

77 x 59 x 12,5 cm

© Alfredo Pirri. Courtesy z2o Sara Zanin

Photo Dario Lasagni

Marta Roberti

Autoritratto Come Santa Olivia Riservia 

Su Giaguaro, 2024

Drawing and collage with graphit and 

oil pastel from handmade carbon paper

on Taiwanese Gampi paper, 240 x 190 cm

© Marta Roberti. Courtesy z2o Sara Zanin

Arte Fiera Bologna 2025: Awards

BPER Prize

The BPER Prize, devoted to enhancing feminine themes, is part of the BPER Group’s traditional efforts focused on inclusion and the fight against gender violence, united with the promotion of culture and art.

As in 2024 (the first year of the prize), BPER will acquire the winning work and display it in its exhibition spaces, thereby providing visibility to the work and to the artist after the conclusion of Arte Fiera, Bologna 2025.

The jury is composed of Serena Morgagni, Director of Communications of BPER Banca; Caterina Riva, Director of MACTE - Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Termoli; Frida Carazzato, scientific curator at Museion - Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea di Bolzano.

Marval Acquisition Award

Addressed primarily to emerging and mid-career artists, the Marval Acquisition Award consists of an acquisition to be added to the Marval Collection, a residency offered to the winning artist, and a targeted campaign on the Collection’s network to give the artist and gallery as much visibility as possible.

The jury is composed of collectors Marco and Valeria Curina.

Pier Paolo Calzolari

Untitled [la rosée], 2024

Salt, pigments, oil pastel, gold leaf, wood,

steel and iron on canvas glued on board,

ceramics, 187 x 190 x 35 cm

Courtesy the artist and 

Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Berlin

Photo © Michele Alberto Serini

Pier Paolo Calzolari

Studio, 1999

Salt, wax and iron on paper on board

41 x 50,4 x 10 cm

Courtesy Repetto Gallery

Lucio Fontana

Concetto spaziale, 1957

Graffiti, holes, ink and aniline on canvas paper, 65 x 80 cm

Courtesy Repetto Gallery

Paolo Serra

Untitled, 2022

Lacquer and metal leaf on panel, 122 x 122 cm

Courtesy Ronchini

Salvatore Astore

Anatomia Umana, 2023

Stainless steel, 100 x 75 x 20 cm

Courtesy the artiste and Mazzoleni, London, Turin

Marinella Senatore

There is so much we can learn from the sun, 2024

Collage and silver leaf on paper, 50 x 70 cm

Courtesy the artist and Mazzoleni, London, Turin

Officina Arte Ducati Award

Ducati confirms the Officina Arte Ducati Award, linked to Percorso, the itinerary that thematically connects a selection of galleries exhibiting at the fair. The format's new theme for 2025 - on which the partnership with Ducati is renewed - is the idea of "Community," as expressed by the sentence "Community: not "I" but "we." As in the previous edition, the jury will assign the Award to the work that best expresses Ducati’s brand values: speed, design research, innovation.

The wining work will become part of the corporate collection in Borgo Panigale, supported by the Fondazione Ducati, which, including through its involvement in Arte Fiera, confirms its commitment to the public by promoting numerous cultural, educational, and social initiatives.

The jury is composed of Stefano Tarabusi, Design Manager Ducati Motor Holding; Andrea Bruciati, Director of Istituto Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este, Tivoli; Valentina Rossi, art historian, curator and lecturer.

Francis Offman

Untitled, 2023-2024

Acrylic, paper, ink, 100% cotton, coffee arounds,

Bologna chalk on linen, 222 x 244 cm

Unique work

Courtesy the artist and P420, Bologna

Photo © Carlo Favero

Victor Fotso Myie

Veglia, 2023

Glazed ceramic and gold, 22 x 60 x 42 cm

Courtesy the artist and P420, Bologna

Photo © Carlo Favero

Lynda Benglis

Gone Gone, 2024

Ice-white onyx, 121 x 26 x 45 cm

Courtesy Thomas Brambilla

Luisa Rabbia 

The Gods: Artemis, 2023

Oil on linen, 244 x 183 cm

Courtesy Galleria Giorgio Persano

Photo Nicola Morittu

Herbert Brandl

No title, 2022

Acrylic on canvas, 300 x 150 cm

Courtesy Galleria Giorgio Persano

Photo Nicola Morittu

Osvaldo Licini by Fainplast Award

The Osvaldo Licini by Fainplast Award stems from an idea by the Picena Contemporary Art Association with the collaboration of the City of Ascoli Piceno and the Fainplast Group.

The award is dedicated to Italian painting, with a selection method that involves about forty contemporary art professionals, including curators, critics, collectors, museum directors, and journalists, each of whom are requested to provide the name of two artists. In 2025, one of the five finalists will be chosen from the Pittura XXI section of Arte Fiera by a jury composed of Roberta Faraotti, collector; Bernardo Follini, Senior Curator Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin; Pier Paolo Pancotto, independent curator.

Francesco Arena

Cassetta, 2023

Bronze, 63 x 31 x 45 cm

Courtesy the artist and

Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Albisola

Edi Hila

Broken circus, 2023

Oil on canvas, 95 x 141 cm

Courtesy the artist and

Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Albisola

Tanya Ling

Di Canio, 2024

Oil on canvas, 115 x 165 cm

Courtsy Ronchini

Martino Gamper

Sitzung, 59, 2023

Alpi Veneer, 82,5 x 67,5 x 50 cm

Courtesy Galleria Franco Noero

Tild Greene

Energy Tastes The Same, 2023

Bronze powder, epoxy resin, 10 x 10 x 2 cm

Courtesy the artist and Galleria Fonti, Naples

Photo Amedeo Benestante

LABINAC

Pino (model 8), 2024

Designed by Jimmie Duhram for LABINAC

Resin, bronze, steel, 41,5 x 69 x 52,5 cm

Courtesy Galleria Sprovieri

Righi Collection Award

The aim of the Righi Collection Award, in its third edition in 2025, is to acquire a work at Arte Fiera that will be added to the collections of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, with specific focus on the work of recent generations of Italian artists.

Currently consisting of over a thousand works of the highest quality, the Righi Collection is one of Italy’s largest private collections of contemporary art.

The jury is composed of Lorenzo Balbi, Artistic Director of MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; Andrea Viliani, Director of Museo delle Civiltà, Rome; Bart van der Heide, Director of Museion - Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea di Bolzano.

Rotary Award

Now in its 13th consecutive edition, the Rotary Award is presented to the most creative installation at Arte Fiera 2025, whether a creation by an artist or the overall setup of a stand.

The Award consists of the Rotary Award Arte Fiera 2025 to gallery, Special Rotaract Bologna Award, and the Special “Andrea Sapone” award by Rotary Club Bologna Valle del Samoggia.

The jury is composed of Davide Daninos, curator, critic, and Art Programme Leader, Marangoni Institute Florence; Giacomo Fontana, Chairman of Rotary Club Bologna Valle del Samoggia; Maura Pozzati, art critic and teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, Bologna; Leonardo Regano, art historian and independent curator; Matteo Zauli, Director of Museo Carlo Zauli, Faenza.

Wael Shawky

I Am Hymns of The New Temple:

Pompeii Ceramic amphora #01, 2023

Courtesy the artist and 

Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan, Naples

Maurizio Mocheti

Camouflage Natter pixel grigi, 2019

Installation (resine plane, 4 multilayer wood panels

painted in gray tones of acrylic)

208 x 208 x 40 cm (overal measurement);

100,5 x 66 x 35 cm (plane)

104 x 104 x 2 cm (each of 4 panels)

Courtesy Galleria Enrico Astuni

Photo Yosuke Kojima

Carlo Benvenuto

Untitled, 2020

Plastic-coated photographic print

on aluminium, 180 x 150 cm

Courtesy the artist and 

Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Berlin

Lorenzo Scotto Di Luzio

Tout le monde se fout des fleurs, 2024

View of the exhibition, Vistamare, Pescara

Courtesy the artist and Vestamare, Milan, Pescara

Photo Roberta Verzella

The Collectors.Chain Prize by Art Defender

With The Collectors.Chain Prize, now in its 4th edition, Art Defender confirms its collaboration with Arte Fiera as well as its special relationship with photography. This year as well, the winning work, selected from those exhibited in the Photography and Moving Images section, will become part of Art Defender’s corporate collection, emphasizing the company’s dedication to collecting and to photography in particular. 

The jury, composed exclusively of collectors, will once again be chaired by Walter Guadagnini, an internationally recognized photography expert. Together with Chiara Massimello and Katia Da Ros, collectors, and with Rischa Paterlini, independent curator, Guadagnini will select the work that best interprets the history of photography in terms of either continuity or innovation.

ARTE FIERA, BOLOGNA 

www.arteferia.it