Premio Lissone 2025: New Edition at the Museum of Contemporary Art

The Premio Lissone 2025 has been announced — the historic biennial event dedicated to painting, which continues to stand out as one of the most significant formats in the Italian contemporary art scene.

Premio Lissone 2025 A cura di A cura di Lorenzo Balbi, Hanne Mugaas, Stefano Raimondi

Realized with the support of Regione Lombardia as part of the Avviso Unico 2025, this year’s edition also celebrates the 25th anniversary of the opening of the MAC – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Lissone – presenting a renewed and international outlook.

Under the artistic direction of Stefano Raimondi, the new format of the Lissone Prize takes shape as a large-scale exhibition spread across all three floors of the museum, where the works of six Italian and international artists engage in an open dialogue of exchange and research. One work by each artist will be acquired and added to the MAC’s permanent collection.

The curators of the Lissone Prize 2025 are three prominent figures from the international contemporary art scene: Lorenzo Balbi, Director of MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, who has invited Viola Leddi and Valerio Nicolai; Hanne Mugaas, Director of Kunsthall Stavanger and Head of Programme at OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, who has selected Cecilia Granara and Giuliana Rosso; and Stefano Raimondi, Director of the MAC, who has chosen Landon Metz and Ariel Schlesinger.

“I have never seen art as a competition but as a dialogue,” remarks Raimondi. “The concept of a prize where one artist ‘wins’ feels distant from the spirit of our time. This edition aims to celebrate collaboration and the exchange of ideas as the founding values of the contemporary artistic community.”

Valerio Nicolai, Lo Scolone, 2020

The selection of artists — all born between the 1980s and 1990s — reflects the original spirit of the historic Lissone Prize, when emerging talents brought the energy of their research into a shared space for debate and growth. “It is highly significant,” notes Mayor Laura Borella, “that all invited artists belong to a generation capable of renewing the gaze on painting, in continuity with the tradition and spirit of the museum’s collections.”

Carolina Minotti, Councillor for Culture, highlights how the Prize regains its international dimension, fostering dialogue between European institutions and Italian artists working abroad, in a continuous exchange of perspectives and artistic languages.

Founded in 1946, the Lissone Prize was one of Italy’s earliest and most prestigious awards dedicated to painting, marking an important chapter in the history of national contemporary art. After historic editions featuring artists such as Afro, Vedova, Turcato, and Morlotti, the Prize was re-established in 1999 and made biennial in 2006, alternating with the Lissone Design Prize.

Giuliana Rosso, La galassia di Andromeda, 2019

Today, with its 2025 edition, the MAC reaffirms its mission to build bridges between generations and geographies, transforming the Lissone Prize from a competition into a platform for dialogue and reflection on the present state of painting.

MAC Museo d'Arte Contemporanea

Lissone

Date 19 ottobre 2025 – 18 gennaio 2026

At the MAO in Turin, the first Italian solo exhibition by Chiharu Shiota, “The Soul Trembles”

For the first time in Italy, the MAO – Museum of Oriental Art in Turin presents the major solo exhibition Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, dedicated to the internationally acclaimed Japanese artist.

Shiota Chiharu, Uncertain Journey, 2016/2019

The project is curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and creator of the original concept, and by Davide Quadrio, Director of MAO, with curatorial assistance from Anna Musini and Francesca Filisetti.

After being presented at prestigious international institutions such as the Grand Palais in Paris, the Busan Museum of Art, the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai, the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane and the Shenzhen Art Museum, the exhibition arrives at MAO as an Italian premiere — and for the first time ever in a museum of Asian art — with a project of extraordinary visual and emotional power.

Through drawings, photographs, sculptures, and monumental installations, The Soul Trembles retraces Shiota’s entire artistic journey, revealing the poetic strength of a language that explores memory, identity, and the fragility of existence. Often inspired by personal experiences, her works investigate the intangible — memories, dreams, emotions — transforming them into spaces of collective contemplation where matter intertwines with the invisible.

Among the featured pieces are some of Shiota’s most iconic installations: Where Are We Going? (2017–2019), a metaphor for travel and uncertain futures; Uncertain Journey (2016), where skeletal boat forms entangled in red threads evoke encounters and destinies; In Silence (2008), a burnt piano wrapped in black thread symbolising the silence that follows destruction; Reflection of Space and Time (2018), reflecting on presence and absence; Inside–Outside (2009), exploring the boundaries between public and private; and the monumental Accumulation – Searching for the Destination (2021), composed of hundreds of suspended suitcases — symbols of memory, migration, and personal journeys.

Shiota Chiharu, In Silence 2002/2019

As in all MAO projects, The Soul Trembles is conceived as a living organism, accompanied by a rich public programme of performances, screenings, talks and conferences, along with educational workshops for schools, families, and visitors of all ages.

The Chiharu Shiota exhibition MAO Turin is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published by Silvana Editoriale, featuring texts by Mami Kataoka and Davide Quadrio, contributions by international scholars, and an extensive visual apparatus.

Starting from 19 November 2025, an unpublished work by the artist, The Moment the Snow Melts, will also be on view at MUDEC in Milan as part of the project The Sense of Snow, curated by Sara Rizzo — an installation that uses the transience of snow as a metaphor for human relationships.

Shiota Chiharu, Accumulation - Searching for the Destination 2014/2019

With The Soul Trembles, MAO reaffirms its mission to foster dialogue between East and West, offering Italian audiences an immersive and poetic exploration of the universal language of the soul.

MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale

Date 22 ottobre 2025 – 28 giugno 2026

Fondazione Pino Pascali celebrates its 90th anniversary with two exhibitions and awards the 2025 Prize to Roberto Cuoghi

On 19 October, Pino Pascali would have turned ninety. Fifty-six years after his death, the Fondazione Pino Pascali celebrates the artist with an intense weekend of events in his hometown, Polignano a Mare.

Roberto Cuoghi, A(XLVIIPs)t, 2021 Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer

Two key dates mark the occasion: on 18 October, the inauguration of the Premio Pino Pascali, awarded this year to Roberto Cuoghi; and on 19 October, the opening of the exhibition “Pino Pascali. Dal 1956 ad oggi”, a wide-ranging project dedicated to the life, work, and enduring legacy of one of the most vital figures of twentieth-century Italian art.

The Pino Pascali Prize to Roberto Cuoghi

Established in 1969 by Palma Bucarelli together with Pascali’s parents, the Pino Pascali Prize is among the longest-running and most significant awards in the Italian contemporary art scene. Over the decades, it has honoured artists such as Jannis Kounellis, Vettor Pisani, Maurizio Mochetti, Vincenzo Agnetti, Jan Fabre, Nathalie Djurberg, Ibrahim Mahama, and, in recent years, Francesco Arena and Nico Vascellari.

For its 27th edition, the Foundation selected Roberto Cuoghi, recognising “his ability to merge the individual and the socio-anthropological dimensions in a dialogue of metamorphosis and experimentation that resonates with Pascali’s own poetics.”

Born in Modena in 1973, Cuoghi is one of the most distinctive figures on the international art scene. His work spans painting, sculpture, sound, and installation, exploring transformation and imitation as creative processes. After representing Italy in the 57th Venice Biennale (curated by Cecilia Alemani) with the work Imitation of Christ, Cuoghi presented exhibitions at the Fridericianum in Kassel and with the retrospective Perla Pollina 1996–2016, held between the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva and the Museo Madre in Naples.

Pino Pascali, Algida, 1959-62, Collezione privata, Bari  

Pino Pascali. Dal 1956 ad oggi

The following day, on 19 October at 7 p.m., the Foundation inaugurates Pino Pascali. From 1956 to Today, an exhibition that retraces the artist’s creative trajectory — from his early years in Rome to his period of full artistic maturity.

Set within the museum’s basement galleries, the exhibition features works, documents, stage designs, photographs, and archival materials, offering insight into Pascali’s imagination and personality. The installation also recreates the atmosphere of his studio, with personal objects and tools revealing the close connection between life and artistic practice.

Visitors are invited to revisit Pascali’s early collective exhibitions, his television collaborations, preparatory studies, and the installations that established him as a key figure in Italy’s Arte Povera and conceptual movements.

Through these two initiatives — the Pino Pascali Prize awarded to Cuoghi and the retrospective dedicated to its namesake — the Fondazione Pino Pascali reaffirms its role as a leading institution for contemporary art in Puglia, transforming the artist’s 90th anniversary into an opportunity to reflect on the past, present, and future of Italian art.

Fondazione Pino Pascali Bari

Date XXVII Roberto Cuoghi

18 Ottobre 2025 – 3 maggio 2026

PINO PASCALI. Dal 1956 ad oggi

19 ottobre 2025 – 31 Dicembre 2025