Recommended exhibitions in Venice
Which exhibitions to visit in Venice? Some people miss the fervor, the excitement that the Venice Biennale brings with its enormous artistic offerings, with the possibility of spending entire days immersed in art rushing from one exhibition to the next, let’s face it, sometimes in a very tiring way, there are instead many exhibitions that can be visited in Venice. It is not only during the seven months of the Biennale of Art and Architecture that Venice becomes one of the favorite places for international artists and curators to exhibit and complement its natural beauty and culture, with the added value of also hosting many exhibitions, especially of contemporary art, but the artistic offer is always wide. Here is my personal guide to the exhibitions you can visit in Venice in 2025. This guide is also designed for those who do not normally frequent modern and contemporary art. The list of exhibitions you can visit in Venice will also be updated periodically thanks to your recommendations. In the list of exhibitions to visit, next to the title is marked those that have already ended.
Exhibitions in museums and galleries
The Strange Life of Things, Tatiana Trouvé – Palazzo Grassi 6/4/’25 – 4/1/’26 (opening soon)
Following her participation in the 2019 group exhibition Places and Signs at Punta della Dogana and after her exhibitions at the Bourse in Paris, the François Pinault Collection is dedicating a monographic exhibition to the French-Italian artist to be held at Palazzo Grassi from April 6 to January 4, 2026.
Thomas Schütte, Punta della Dogana. 6/4/’25- 4/1/’26 (opening soon).
This exhibition explores the flow of motifs in the artist’s major works from the 1970s to the present. Focusing on the exceptional group of works belonging to the Pinault Collection (nearly fifty sculptures) and accompanied by loans from the artist, as well as a hundred or so works on paper, many of which have never been exhibited before, the exhibition traces, in a non-chronological manner, the emergence of forms and their variations, confronting them with the German artist’s practice of drawing, watercolor and printmaking.
Caricatured, sometimes abused, always poignant, Schütte’s figures – the central subject of the Pinault Collection’s works – come to life in clay, wax, ceramic, glass, steel or bronze, either as full-length portraits or as character heads, while remaining anchored in drawing. Reconciling violence and wit, intimacy and theatricality, seriousness and humor, the artist’s singular universe has given him a leading role in art.
Roberto Matta 1911–2002, through 3/23/2025
I have always liked Roberto Sebastian Matta, a Chilean artist who was very important to the Surrealist movement and to the breadth of his thought and work that was very varied in its expressions, as little exhibited in Italy. The artist is present in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection with a painting and two drawings and was the protagonist of a collateral event at the 56th. Venice Biennale in 2015 dedicated to his sculptures, Roberto Sebastian Matta, Sculptures, which was held in the garden of Palazzo Soranzo Cappello. At last you can visit a monographic exhibition of his work until March 23, 2025 right in Venice at the Cà Pesaro Museum. The exhibition features works from various periods by Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (his full name) and ranges from creations that embrace the Surrealist experience, to more political works, along with themes involving war, to monumental sculptures. Also highlighted is his youthful relationship with the architect Le Corbusier (Roberto Matta was also an architect), his experience as a designer, his connection with Venice, and abstract expressionism.Then there is the short chapter on love, represented especially by the three paintings Todo empiesa con un beso, Dante and Beatrice, Tristan and Isolde, and Mary Magdalene and the Chosen One, famous couples of lovers or rather non-lovers, where the kiss, the kiss that perhaps was never even there, is almost a devouring and interpenetrating of heads. After all, this also serves to remind us that the loves that make one dream, in literature (and perhaps in life as well) are the impossible ones .
ACP – Franchetti Palace 21/2-27/7-’25
Objects and things think in silence, Mattia Moreni
Mattia Bruno Moreni was an artist who spanned the 20th century, adhering to various artistic expressions. His works were exhibited many times at the Biennale between the 1950s and 1972, when he had a monographic room. The 30 paintings in this exhibition dedicated to Mattia Moreni-many of them large in size-trace the artist’s research, from the Cubist-inspired experiments of the 1950s, through the period of Informal Art and the cycle of “Watermelons”-which he presented in his own room at the 1972 Venice Biennale-to a broad exploration of the “Humanoids” phase of his work. With these works, beginning in the 1980s, the artist carries on a lucid and intuitive reflection on the impact of technology and information technology on culture and everyday life.
Bittersweet–Dolceamaro, Graham Sutherland
The “Bittersweet” exhibition dedicated to Graham Sutherland, dubbed the Damien Hirst of his time, is organized under the patronage of the British Embassy in Rome. The exhibition explores themes dear to the artist, such as nature and the animal world, through a selection of oil paintings, watercolors and lithographs chosen from his most famous cycles, including the famous “Bestiary” created for Guillaume Apollinaire’s poetic compositions on animals. Sutherland’s works, always suspended between reality and imagination, approach surrealism and immerse us in what Francesco Arcangeli has called a “magical unease,” characterized by allusive metamorphoses and the tension between opposing forces. These forces, in their unstable balance, create a “mystery” whose solution will never be known. Both exhibitions are curated by Roberta Perazzini Calarota.
Venetian Galleries
What other exhibitions to visit in Venice besides those in museums? This space is dedicated to Venetian art galleries and institutions that are in close relationship with the area.
The Universal form of ONE – Andrea Marchesini
From February 16 to April 27, the exhibition of Veronese artist Andrea Marchesini can be visited at Cantieri Crea del Contemporaneo (Giudecca). The title of the exhibition encapsulates the essence of Andrea Marchesini’s research. The artist brings together the different layers of reality in his works. The works inhabit the space of the old Venetian factory and seductively converse with the viewer. Such practice deeply reflects the processuality and artistic language of an author in perpetual balance between personal and universal, person and mask, in the work, sign and color and assembled elements.
Entering the exhibition space means passing through a corridor in which a series of banners set up in sequence, images, colors and sounds catapult us into an intimate and profound world of our author. The arrangement includes a video projection of the mixed media works, the various convex mirrors of various shapes that dialogue with different materials, formats and large formats hanging on the walls and straight fabrics. His research starts from the Venetian artistic tradition of the 1500s and goes through various eras.The artist uses oil paint, acrylic, plaster, enamel, tar and impasto, embodied images that exude her inner world and her familiar past, which becomes a universal dimension. the exhibition is curated by Martina Cavallarin, with Antonio Caruso and Matteo Scavetta.
Exhibitions in churches and monastic spaces
Petrae Fidei– Nicola Samorì in San Giorgio Maggiore
Until March 8, 2025, the beautiful exhibition by Nicola Samorì can be visited in the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore. Composed of three works in dialogue with each other, Petrae Fidei occupies the space of the conclave hall. The artist captures a scene with the Martyrdom of St. Stephen by Pier Francesco Cittadini, the patron saint, along with St. George of the abbey, which also preserves his relics. Nicola Samorì focuses on a detail of Vittore Carpaccio’s painting currently on loan in Stockholm, which depicts precisely The Martyrdom of St. Stephen, to realize his personal interpretation of the martyrdom using marble, canvas, and colors to create an evocative and convincing whole that dialogues perfectly with the context.
Photographic exhibitions
This space is dedicated to lovers of photographic exhibitions.
Le stanze della Fotografia – San Giorgio Maggiore
Robert Mapplethorpe. The Forms of the Classic 10/4–23/11/2025 (forthcoming opening)
Maurizio Galimberti between Polaroid/Ready Made and Italo Calvino’s American Lessons 10/4-27/7/’25 (forthcoming opening)
Special Events in Venice
Venice Gallery Weekend, to be held on March 21, 22, and 23, 2025. This event, sponsored by the Venice Galleries View association, will offer a program of vernissages, talks, and special events promoted and hosted by participating galleries.
While this is not the first time the association has organized a shared and widespread initiative, the Venice Gallery Weekend of 2025 represents a new phase for the association. Founded in 2018, Venice Galleries View has grown over the years, welcoming new galleries and participating more and more actively in the Venice arts system. To date, VGV brings together seventeen galleries of research working in the contemporary art system and primary market, and aims to attract the public international art and promote the cultural life of the city, which also develops beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of the Biennale. For information venicegalleriesview@gmail.com
FIORELLA PAGOTTO — I am an art historian and a writer, authoring essays on art history and biographies of artists. I also work on the history of architecture and the history of architectural restoration. I have been a guide to the city of Venice and the Venetian villas since 2012, when I passed the Veneto Region exam.