In anticipation of the Biennale Architettura 2025 curated by Carlo Ratti, Venice is preparing to welcome the public with a series of can’t-miss exhibitions. Here are the ones we recommend

MODERN BODIES AT THE GALLERIE DELL’ACCADEMIA
All eyes are on the body at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice for the exhibition curated by Guido Beltramini, Francesca Borgo and Giulio Manieri Elia. Corpi moderni. La costruzione del corpo nella Venezia del Rinascimento. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dürer, Giorgione [Corpi moderni. The Making of the Body in Renaissance Venice. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dürer, Giorgione] analyses the changes that occurred with regards to how the human body was understood during the Renaissance, using Venice as a geographical framing device.
Divided into three chapters, the exhibition features drawings, paintings and sculptures from the most famous international and national museums and collections, including masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci (whose iconic Vitruvian Man is presented), Albrecht Dürer, Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione, alongside anatomical models, scientific instruments, clothes, miniatures and books. The aim is to highlight the fact that since the Renaissance the body has become an object not just of scientific and medical study, but also of desire, as well as a place of cultural representation. Science, art and social conventions have contributed to defining new ways of approaching the body, building a bridge towards modernity.

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Corpi moderni. The Making of the Body in Renaissance Venice. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dürer, Giorgione
4 April – 27 July 2025
GALLERIE DELL’ACCADEMIA
Campo della Carità ‒ Dorsoduro 1050, Venice
https://www.gallerieaccademia.it

Captions:

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564), Studies for the Libyan Sibyl, c. 1510-11, red stone and touches of white chalk on paper, 289 x 214 mm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv. 24.197.2. Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giorgio da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione (1476/78-1510), The Old Woman, c. 1506, oil on canvas, 68 x 59 cm, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, inv. 272. Credit: Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

MATTHIAS SCHALLER AT CASA DEI TRE OCI. PIERO GOLIA AND MARCANTONIO BRANDOLINI D’ADDA AT PALAZZO DIEDO
The Casa dei Tre Oci, the lagoon headquarters of the Berggruen Institute Europe on the island of Giudecca, hosts the exhibition Controfacciata by the German photographer Matthias Schaller, curated by Mario Codognato. Twenty-eight photographs from the series of the same name, many of which were created for the occasion, form a visual journey that guides viewers through Schaller’s investigation of Venice, which began in 2004. Focusing on the counterfaçades [Ed. note: the inner wall of a façade] of the buildings and immortalising them in shadow, but illuminated by a blinding light, the photographer highlighted a dialogue between the city’s architecture and its atmospheres.
Berggruen Arts & Culture presents, in the Venetian venue of Palazzo Diedo, the permanent site-specific installation by Piero Golia. While awaiting the reopening of Palazzo Diedo in May ‒ with new exhibitions and The Next Earth. Computation, Crisis, Cosmology, a collateral event of the Biennale Architettura 2025 ‒, on 5 April 2025 visitors will be able to get a sneak peek of the intervention by the Neapolitan artist, who has chosen to use the traditional Venetian terrazzo technique to give shape to his work on the floor of the portego on the ground floor. Untitled (floor) is revealed to the public only after dark, accentuating the idea of ​​suspension and mystery that characterises Golia’s work.
On the same day, the new site-specific installation by Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda, which brings new life to the only fireplace still standing in the historic building, will also welcome visitors to Palazzo Diedo. Using cotisso tiles – the raw glass remaining from previous glass melting –, the artist and designer evokes, thanks to the reflections of the glass, the warmth and nuances of the fire that inhabited the fireplace once covered with majolica tiles. Both installations will be on show again in May, when Palazzo Diedo reopens.

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Matthias Schaller. Controfacciata
5 April – 23 November 2025
CASA DEI TRE OCI
Fondamenta Zitelle 43, Venice
https://berggruen.org/centers/venice

Piero Golia, Untitled (floor)
Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda, Untitled
opening 5 April 2025, 1-3.30 pm
PALAZZO DIEDO
Cannaregio 2386, Venice
https://berggruenarts.org/

TATIANA TROUVÉ AND THOMAS SCHÜTTE AT PALAZZO GRASSI AND PUNTA DELLA DOGANA
The Pinault Collection opens the exhibition season with two shows dedicated to two protagonists of contemporaneity. Curated by Caroline Bourgeois and James Lingwood, Tatiana Trouvé’s solo exhibition at Palazzo Grassi is the first major Italian monographic exhibition of the artist originally from Cosenza. Sculptural works and drawings, some of which have never been exhibited before, transform the spaces of Palazzo Grassi into a sort of labyrinth from which the cornerstones of Trouvé’s artistic philosophy emerge. Combining references to the present and memories of the distant past, the artist gives shape to a visual language that draws on different materials and tools, such as asphalt, marble, bronze, carving and casting.
The works held by the Pinault Collection are the heart of Thomas Schütte’s first retrospective in Italy, hosted by Punta della Dogana. Curated by Camille Morineau and Jean-Marie Gallais, the exhibition chronologically relays the results of the German artist’s reflection on forms, pairing approximately fifty sculptures from the Pinault Collection with those lent by the artist and one hundred or so works on paper, some of which have never been shown before.
What emerges is the evolution Schütte managed to achieve in his rendering of the human figure and his way of relating to space, bespeaking a practice that, since the end of the 1970s, has produced works made using the most varied techniques, from sculpture to architectural models to photographs and engravings.

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Tatiana Trouvé. The strange life of things
6 April 2025 – 4 January 2026
PALAZZO GRASSI
Campo San Samuele 3231, Venice
https://www.pinaultcollection.com/palazzograssi/it

Thomas Schütte. Genealogies
6 April – 23 November 2025
PUNTA DELLA DOGANA
Dorsoduro 2, Venice
https://www.pinaultcollection.com/palazzograssi/it

Captions:

Tatiana Trouvé, Le voyage vertical, from the series Les dessouvenus, 2022. Coloured pencil, bleach and copper on paper mounted on canvas. H 260 x 400 x 5 cm. Pinault Collection. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian. Photo credit: Thomas Lannes © Tatiana Trouvé, by SIAE 2024

Thomas Schütte, Efficiency Men, 2005. Installation view at Punta della Dogana, 2011. Steel and silicon. 3 figures: 230 x 55 x 120 cm (pink); 230 x 55 x 110 cm (green); 230 x 55 x 119 cm (yellow). Pinault Collection © Palazzo Grassi, photo: Fulvio Orsenigo © Thomas Schütte, by SIAE 2024

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE AND MAURIZIO GALIMBERTI AT THE STANZE DELLA FOTOGRAFIA
The Stanze della Fotografia on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore are the setting for the highly anticipated exhibition dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe. Curated by Denis Curti, organised and sponsored by Marsilio Arte and Fondazione Giorgio Cini in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation of New York, Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico is the first chapter of an exhibition trilogy that will also make stops in Milan and Rome. On each occasion, the subject of the investigation is a theme rooted in the photographer’s artistic philosophy. It begins with the classical dimension, which was an innate part of Mapplethorpe’s aesthetics, and it carries on under the banner of desire and beauty. The Venetian exhibition brings together over two hundred photographs, some of which have never been shown in Italy, highlighting the artist’s mastery in composing works shot through with a powerful sensuality conveyed by the skilful use of light and volumes, which evoke the characteristics of ancient statuary.
The first floor of the Stanze della Fotografia will host another great protagonist of international photography: the exhibition Maurizio Galimberti tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni Americane di Italo Calvino, curated by Denis Curti, which pays homage to the author known throughout the world for his portraits of stars such as Lady Gaga, Johnny Depp and Robert De Niro. His famous Polaroid mosaics stand out among the works included in the exhibition’s six sections. Focusing on the idea of ​​fragmentation and the manipulation of images in the development stage, Galimberti achieves results that have a strong visual impact, drawing on the particularities of the mosaic to suggest a powerful overall vision.
At the Stanze della Fotografia, space will also be dedicated to the works of the three winners of the open call for talents under thirty inspired by the themes of the exhibition trilogy on Robert Mapplethorpe.

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Robert Mapplethorpe. Le forme del classico
10 April ‒ 23 November 2025
Maurizio Galimberti tra Polaroid/Ready Made e le Lezioni americane di Italo Calvino
10 April ‒ 27 July 2025
LE STANZE DELLA FOTOGRAFIA
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
https://www.lestanzedellafotografia.it

MARIA HELENA VIEIRA DA SILVA AT THE PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION
The new exhibition curated by Flavia Frigeri and staged at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection is entitled Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. Anatomia di uno spazio [Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space]. Around seventy works from international museums and private collections offer the public the opportunity to closely observe the pictorial research of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, who passed away in 1992 but is still a point of reference in the field of abstraction. The retrospective, which will subsequently be hosted by the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, strengthens the bond between the artist and Peggy Guggenheim, who wanted her among the thirty-one protagonists of the show Exhibition by 31 Women staged in 1943 at Art of This Century, the patroness’s New York gallery.

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Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space
12 April – 15 September 2025
COLLEZIONE PEGGY GUGGENHEIM
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni
Dorsoduro 701, Venice
https://www.guggenheim-venice.it/it/

Text by Arianna Testino