Exhibitions

It is the era of the rediscovery of forgotten positions of modernism - such as the Swiss Xanti Schawinsky (1904-1979), who combined visual art with theatre, stage and performance and was an interdisciplinary pioneer. He first studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar in the 1920s, where his teachers included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Adolf Meyer and László Moholy-Nagy. He then taught as an assistant to Oskar Schlemmer in Dessau. When Schawinsky, who was Jewish, had to flee from the Nazis to the United States, Josef Albers brought him to the legendary Black Mountain College in 1936. It was here that he established what was at the time an open method of working. The performance 'Play, Life, Illusion' (1937), which he developed with his students, is regarded as an early anticipation of process-based performance art in its combination of art and science as well as music, dance, theatre, painting, set and lighting design. He paved the way for US artists such as John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg, who later studied here. The exhibition traces his entire career, from his early works to his process-oriented paintings of the 1950s and 1960s. As part of the exhibition, British artist and performer Monster Chetwynd (b. 1973) will create the large-scale installation 'Xanti Shenanigans'.

Image: 
Xanti Schawinsky, Untitled (Architecture), (Ohne Titel (Architektur)), 1945, Courtesy of the Xanti Schawinsky Estate

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) used to be a painter of our parents' generation, an artist whose pictures were everywhere as postcards and prints, in readers and calendars. But now it is time for younger generations to rediscover him as one of the most virtuoso and idiosyncratic painters of modernism. The exhibition at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen's K20, organised in collaboration with the Albertina in Vienna to mark the 40th anniversary of the Russian-French painter's death, brings together some 120 works from all phases of his career. Growing up in the small town of Vitebsk (in present-day Belarus), the eldest child of an Orthodox Jewish family, Chagall reflected on his origins throughout his life. His paintings tell of everyday life and customs, but also of ostracism and pogroms. They deal with the trauma of persecution, but also with the dream of a better life. The exhibition focuses on the early, socially critical works created between 1910 and 1923. As a young artist in Paris, Chagall experimented with Fauvism and Cubism, combining the new trends with Jewish motifs and Russian folklore to create avant-garde, deeply spiritual paintings.

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Marc Chagall, Liebespaar mit rotem Hahn, 1956-1965, Les amoureux au coq rouge, Öl, Gouache, Tempera und Tinte auf Leinwand, 81 x 66 cm, Privatsammlung Deutschland, Courtesy Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, © VG-Bild-Kunst Bonn 2024

‘The personal is political.’ This slogan from the 1970s feminist movement is quoted time and again. It takes on special significance in the work of Paula Rego (1935–2022), one of the most important Portuguese artists of our time. A major retrospective at the Folkwang Museum, featuring around 120 exhibits, now focuses on the political aspects of her visually powerful paintings. Her work, which is often surreal or fantastical, deals with themes such as political and sexual violence, abuse of power, social injustice, physical self-determination, and mental health. Even in her early paintings from the 1950s, before she emigrated to Great Britain, Rego addressed the impact of António de Oliveira Salazar's dictatorship on Portuguese society. A highlight of the exhibition is the 'Abortion Series', begun in 1998 in response to the failure to legalise abortion in Portugal. As with all of Rego's works, the rarely exhibited paintings in this series are highly relevant once again in light of the resurgence of totalitarian ideologies.

Image: 
Paula Rego
Celebration, 1953
Courtesy The Estate of Paula Rego and Victoria Miro

Following exhibitions at the Kunstverein Hannover (2007) and the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin (2009), 'KAIROS / Hauntological Variations' at K21 is Julie Mehretu's first solo institutional exhibition in Germany in over 15 years. Spanning three decades, the exhibition showcases the artist's complete body of work. Born in Ethiopia in 1970, Mehretu emigrated to the United States with her family in 1977. Today, Mehretu, who lives in New York, is considered one of the most important painters of our time. Nearly 100 pieces trace her artistic development, from her early drawings in the 1990s to her most recent abstract paintings. Mehretu's personal history of migration has influenced her art, which deals with historical crises, upheavals, and conflicts. She uses media images and archival materials that mark central political events and historical locations in her works. Using techniques such as painting, drawing, airbrushing and screen printing, she transforms these once familiar images into abstract compositions. These abstractions depict and reflect on places and moments in recent history, ranging from the Grenfell Tower fire in London to the destroyed palace of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. In Düsseldorf, alongside previously unseen drawings and works on paper, the source material behind Mehretu's paintings are displayed for the first time.

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Julie Mehretu © George Etheredge/Plus Magazine

Annegret Soltau, whose significant works are also featured in the Deutsche Bank Collection, was once considered an insider tip. However, in recent decades, the artist, who was born in 1945, has become recognised as a pioneer of the feminist avant-garde through her photographic and performative self-representation. Now, the Städel Museum is dedicating a major retrospective to the artist, which was developed in collaboration with her. With over 80 pieces, the exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of her diverse body of work, including drawings, expanded photography, videos, and installations. Among these are significant loans and pioneering works from Soltau's studio, some of which have never been exhibited before. Since the late 1970s, Soltau's work has addressed themes such as violence and vulnerability, the depiction of the female body, pregnancy, family, and ageing – subjects that have often been censored due to their unflinching nature. Her 'sewn-together' photographs play an important role in this context. Soltau, who worked as a surgical assistant in accident surgery at Hamburg port as a young woman, collages her self-portraits and sews them back together in a manner reminiscent of Frankenstein, symbolising a complex, constructed identity.

Image: 
Annegret Soltau
Umschlossene, 1973
SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
Foto: Fotostudio pixelstorm, Wien (Manfred Kostal und Christian Schindler)

Tracey Emin is a legend. She rose to fame as a Young British Artist in the 1990s with her radically autobiographical and confessional style, and has experienced a revival in the last decade. Emin, who founded a private art school in her home town of Margate on the English coast, was diagnosed with life-threatening bladder cancer, which she narrowly survived. But artistically and in terms of her painting, this was also a resurrection - her paintings became even more intense and ruthless. Palazzo Strozzi is now presenting her first institutional solo exhibition in Italy. With more than 60 works from different phases of her career, Emin explores her central themes: sex and solitude, the body and desire. At the same time, in this premiere in Florence, her painting is corresponding to the art and painting of the Renaissance - a must for all fans!

Image:
Tracey Emin
I waited so Long
2022
Private collection c/o Xavier Hufkens Gallery
© Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Foto HV-Studio.

We are living in the most ferocious time the world has ever known. [...] Each of us must bear one's fate, living or dying [...] - What was before 1914 belongs to another world - so we will always face the future'. Egon Schiele wrote this to his sister Gertrud in November 2014. In 2015 he volunteered for military service and married his long-time girlfriend Edith Harms shortly before being sent to Prague. During his basic military training and the associated transfers, Schiele gradually abandoned the radical formal experiments of the years 1910 to 1914 and developed a more realistic style characterised by deeper empathy. He returned to Vienna in 1917. The Secession dedicated its 49th exhibition to him and his reputation grew. But towards the end of the war, in the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu struck the Austrian capital with disastrous consequences. Edith Schiele, six months pregnant, died on 28 October. Egon Schiele died on 31 October 1918, aged only 28. The exhibition ‘The Late Schiele' focuses on the ruptures and changes in Schiele's later work from 1914-1918, which has received less attention. With 130 works of art from Austrian and international collections and archive material such as Edith Schiele's previously unpublished diary, the exhibition offers new insights into this decisive period. The large-format portrait of the painter Albert Paris von Gütersloh from 1918 from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota, is one of the highlights of the exhibition, as are four previously unknown works on paper, which are being exhibited for the first time.

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Egon Schiele, Die Umarmung, 1917 © Belvedere, Wien, Foto: Belvedere, Wien/Johannes Stoll

Even for an artist as celebrated as Anselm Kiefer, this is an exhibition of superlatives: for the first time in their history, the Stedelijk Museum and the Van Gogh Museum are joining forces to offer a unique encounter with one of the great modern painters: Vincent van Gogh. Since his childhood, Kiefer has had a special relationship with the work of van Gogh. He also has a long personal history with the Stedelijk. The museum was an early acquirer of his work and played a crucial role in his career. At the heart of the exhibition is a new, 24-metre-long, immersive painting installation, which also provides the exhibition's title: 'Tell me where the flowers are' refers to the 1955 anti-war song by US folk musician Pete Seeger, made famous by Marlene Dietrich - and is also a reference to van Gogh's visionary flower paintings. The Stedelijk Museum is presenting the first joint exhibition of all of Kiefer's works in the museum's collection, including completely new pieces that have never been shown before, as well as famous works such as ‘Innenraum’ (1981) and ‘Märkischer Sand’ (1982).

The exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum presents seven of Van Gogh's key works alongside thirteen of Kiefer's early drawings and a number of previously unseen paintings. These include Van Gogh's famous ‘Cornfield with Crows’ (1890), which is displayed in the same room as Kiefer's monumental works that explore the motif.

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Anselm Kiefer, Sag mir wo die Blumen sind (2024), installation view at studio, Croissy, France. Emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, gold leaf, sediment of electrolysis, clay, dried flowers, straw, fabric, steel, charcoal and collage of canvas on canvas. Copyright: Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Nina Slavcheva

This spring, the Tate Modern is dedicating a brilliant retrospective to one of the most fearless and original artists of the 20th century. Leigh Bowery, who died of AIDS in 1994 aged just 33, was an icon - of subculture and of the visual arts. His body was the testing ground for the most incredible transformations, which the Melbourne-born artist performed in his extreme performances and designs, combining high-end fashion, S&M, fetish, rubber, elements of burlesque, freak show, Viennese actionism and glam rock. He founded the legendaryTaboo club  was immortalised by Lucien Freud in now world-famous nude paintings, and has been featured in magazines such as I-D and FACE. He is an institution in Britain. The major exhibition at the Tate Modern presents Bowery's eccentric costumes alongside paintings, photographs and videos, documenting how he changed art, fashion and popular culture forever.

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Tate Modern, Leigh Bowery
Fergus Greer, Leigh Bowery Session I Look 2 1988
© Fergus Greer

Born in Zanzibar in 1954, Lubaina Himid is one of the most important figures of the British Black Arts movement. A pioneering artist and curator in the mid-1980s, she organised exhibitions featuring black female artists and addressed themes such as racism, feminism, diaspora and cultural memory in her paintings and installations. Until a few years ago, she remained relatively unknown outside of London, but this has completely changed. She is set to exhibit at the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2026. A special collaboration is now on view at the Mudam in Luxembourg. This is the first time that Himid has exhibited together with her partner, the Polish multimedia artist Magda Stawarska. The two have been working together artistically for over ten years. Conceived as a single, large-scale performance, 'Nets for Night and Day' resembles an associative journey. Visitors board ships, ride carts, and stroll through dreamscapes created by the artists and their collective imagination. The focus is on the latest presentation of their jointly conceived series, Zanzibar, which began in 1999 and consists of nine diptychs. This is accompanied by a 38-minute libretto composed by Stawarska during her years of dialogue with Himid. According to Himid, the exhibition is about a particular kind of longing connected to 'the places we leave but always carry within us'.

Image: 
Lubaina Himid
In Your Dreams, 2021 – 2022
Courtesy die Künstlerin und Hollybush Gardens, London
und Greene Naftali, New York | Foto: Gavin Renshaw

Ed Atkins is the great melancholic of digital art. His computer-generated videos and animations are imbued with sentimentality. beauty, sadness, and transformation alternate with paranoid thoughts. Tate Britain is now presenting his largest retrospective exhibition to date. Born in Oxford in 1982, Atkins is widely regarded as one of the most influential British artists of the present day, particularly for his innovative use of contemporary technologies to explore the blurring boundaries between the digital world and human emotions. In order to examine the relationships between reality and fiction, idealism and materialism, he draws upon techniques from film, video games, literature, music and theatre. The exhibition brings together films and videos from the last 15 years, as well as texts, paintings, embroideries and drawings. In his work, Atkins uses his own experiences, feelings and body as models or avatars to explore intimacy, love and loss. It spans his early videos from 2010, which he describes as 'montages of intoxication, rejection and abandonment', to works from 2019 onwards that use almost exclusively computer-generated animations. 'The Worm' (2021), for example, is an animated TV staging of a phone call between Atkins and his mother. 'Pianowork 2' (2024), on the other hand, features an extremely accurate digital replica of the artist performing a minimalist piano piece. The theme of loss, deeply felt and forensically examined, runs through this exhibition like a thread, forming the basis for Atkins' deeply human and existential work.

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Ed Atkins, The Worm, 2021 © Ed Atkins. Courtesy of the Artist, Cabinet Gallery, London, dépendance, Brussels, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, and Gladstone Gallery.

In the early 1960s, Marisol was something of a pop star in the New York art scene. The Venezuelan-American artist appeared in Andy Warhol's films such as 13 Most Beautiful Girls (1964) and caused a sensation with her sculptures: totemic wooden and bronze figures inspired by folk art and mass culture, depicting famous personalities such as Warhol, John Wayne or Charles de Gaulle. But often also several versions of herself - like a group of multiple personalities. Marisol also integrated casts or moulds of her body parts into her life-size figures, face, mouth, hands. The label 'Pop Art' doesn't really fit her work. Marisol, who came from a wealthy family, was only eleven when her mother committed suicide and her father sent her to boarding school. As a child she stopped speaking and for the rest of her life only talked when necessary. Her work not only dealt with her trauma, but also with social justice, feminism, patriarchy and war. In the 1970s, her idiosyncratic position was unjustly forgotten. Now the Dallas Museum of Art is showing her retrospective, described by the New York Times as a 'must-see exhibition', as the last stop on its tour.

Image:
Nancy Astor, Marisol with several of her sculptures, 1964,
photographic print, Marisol Papers, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

She was a pioneer in more ways than one. As early as 1969, Miriam Schapiro was designing her monumental geometric abstractions on the computer. She would draw a simple shape by hand, then translate it into numbers and then into dots on a grid. Using special software, she was able to rotate the original shape three-dimensionally in space. The shapes she drew and painted were not just ordinary shapes. From the mid-1970s, the artist, who was born in 1923, was part of the 'Pattern and Decoration Movement', which focused on abstract forms in applied arts such as quilting, embroidery, metalwork and basketry, which had been marginalised as 'women's work' and 'arts and crafts'. In 1971, the Canadian artist, who was born in 1925, moved to Los Angeles to co-direct the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts with Judy Chicago. The following year, they opened 'Womanhouse' (1972), an art installation that was also a performance space and is considered a pioneering work of the feminist avant-garde. Sharpio's bold early work is on show at the ICA.

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MSCHA308: Miriam Schapiro, "Docking #2," 1971. Acrylic on canvas. 72 x 80 in. © 2025 Estate of Miriam Schapiro / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Eric Firestone Gallery.

This exhibition consists of a single immersive work by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist: the 2001 video installation "Supersubjective", for which Rist transformed digital surveillance footage shot with a hand-held camera during a month-long trip to Japan into a dreamlike, contemplative space, complete with custom-made cushions and seating. The audience is invited to relax in the darkened gallery and listen to the electronic soundtrack, created in collaboration with composer Anders Guggisberg. It is based on the now anachronistic sounds of an internet dial-up modem, to which Rist sings her own lyrics. Her work looks at nature and the built environment with wonder, but also with ambivalent feelings. Created at the turn of the millennium, the installation reflects Rist's longing for connection in an increasingly digital and globalised world, as well as the alienation caused by new technologies.

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Pipilotti Rist, Supersubjektiv, 2001. Installation view: Pipilotti Rist, Paço das Artes / MIS Museu da Imagem e do Som, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2009. © Pipilotti Rist, courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Luhring Augustine / 2024 ProLitteris, Zurich / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Everton Baldin.

When they hear the title of the latest California Biennial, some might think of the political situation in the United States and around the world. However, the current biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art focuses on a different theme: late adolescence, a rollercoaster ride of hope and future potential, as well as fears and despair. The title is inspired by the eponymous album by Southern Californian punk rock band Emily's Sassy Lime, founded in 1993 by three Asian-American teenagers. The biennial explores young adulthood from various perspectives, featuring works by renowned Californian artists reflecting on their youth and collaborations between artists and their children. In an era of uncertainty, this exhibition pays tribute to teenagers, both past and present, who have fearlessly shaped their cultural landscape, and to the young individuals who will define tomorrow's world. International art stars such as Laura Owens and Miranda July are also taking part.

Artificial intelligence and the virtual world are on the rise. And the advent of new technologies has not only changed almost every aspect of our daily lives, but also contemporary art. While AI artworks are fetching top prices at auction, a new generation of artists is reflecting on the increasingly blurred boundaries between games, virtuality and the real world, between technology and ecology. MACHINE LOVE presents around 50 works of contemporary art that use game engines, AI and virtual reality (VR), including works that use generative AI - a technology that can surpass human creativity. These works explore new aesthetics and image-making, or examine how online avatars and characters can produce new forms of gender and identity that break with existing social norms. The works revolve around universal reflections on life, death and ethics, the climate crisis, utopias or speculative interpretations of human history. The artists include Lu Yang, Deutsche Bank's Artist of the Year 2022, Annika Yi, Beeple, Jacoby Satterwhite.

Image:
Sato Ryotaro, Inorganic Friends
2023
4K video
7 min. 37 sec.
Referential image, Mori Art Museum
MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art
Publicity Images Captions & Credit_ Opening Press Release

The exhibition 'and yet: looking at contemporary art 1985-2025' invites you on a journey between darkness and light. The selection of some 40 works from the Tel Aviv Museum's collection includes photography, painting, sculpture, video and installation. Leading international artists such as Gerhard Richter, Ugo Rondinone and Cecily Brown are presented alongside new positions such as Lenz Geerk and Louise Giovanelli. Spread over four floors of the Eyal Ofer Pavilion, the exhibition explores the highs and lows of extreme experiences, human vulnerability and the search for balance. Among the works on display is Ugo Rondinone's video installation 'Thanx 4 Nothing', in which his late partner, the poet and artist John Giorno, recites one of the poems he wrote for his 70th birthday, capturing the raw emotional power of gratitude, but also of disillusionment. German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann's photographic installation '100 Years' is a poignant reflection on ageing. In his early work I 'Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like', American video pioneer Bill Viola explores fundamental questions of human existence. The exhibition also features important international figurative painting from the last four decades, including New York painter Cecily Brown, Peter Doig and Friedrich Kunath.

Image:
Ugo Rondinone Thanx 4 Nothing, 2013
One screen, stereo sound, 19:48 min loop
Courtesy of studio rondinone and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Kukje Gallery, Seoul; Esther Schipper, Berlin; Gladstone, New York; Mennour, Paris; and Sadie Coles HQ, London © the artist.