After a somewhat interlocutory 2024, with an edition not exactly like those of a few years ago, there is a different air in Artissima this year: more quality, a fair that does not seek to expand its identity to excess but aims to confirm it, to refine it, to bring it to maturity. The Turin fair, directed for the fourth year by Luigi Fassi, offers the perception of a moving organism that is fully aware of its own history (this is the 32nd edition) and has decided to embrace it, to follow it, to give it a coherent measure. One gets the impression that this year Artissima did not need to want to reaffirm its uniqueness: it simply exercises it. Turin remains the place where research is still possible, where art retains a margin of risk, of openness and thought, but where we also look out for the sale , and in this respect, the offer is rich, varied, articulated, suitable, perhaps this year more than ever, for every kind of visitor. And “every kind of visitor” is to be understood in the most literal sense: there is material for anyone’s budget.
There is no room for complacency. The theme chosen for this year (for those who look at these superstructures who then, in the end, care just the right amount) is Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, inspired by the vision of Richard Buckminster Fuller: a collective reflection on responsibility, sustainability and the role of art as a tool for guidance. Fine, but fairgoers are also, and perhaps most importantly, interested in figuring out what to hang in their homes: and in that respect there is a perhaps even exponential increase in galleries displaying prices. In a very discreet form, of course: most prefer the QR code method to be framed that returns a PDF with the requests. This growing transparency is an eloquent sign: a simple gesture of trust in the public, of respect for young collectors, of adherence to a culture of dialogue, and in general of openness, which we expect will gather more and more proselytes in the future.
So let us come to the proposals. We are in Turin, so let’s start withArte Povera, and of course Tucci Russo: the stand of the historic Piedmontese gallery is dominated by a large Biliardo by Mario Merz (1981), mixed media on canvas and neon, measuring two meters by six (850,000 euros) and by a fine work by Giuseppe Penone, Pelle di marmo e spine d’acacia from 2009, a work with two souls (a large canvas with the typical acacia thorns and with glass inserts and a part in Carrara marble, 420 thousand euros), which dialogue with a steel sculpture by Tony Cragg, Incident from 2023 (380 thousand euros), among the British artist’s best recent stuff. Arte povera also at Biasutti&Biasutti , which present themselves with a large series of Fibonacci by Mario Merz (we are in the range of several tens of thousands euros), works by Giulio Paolini (30 to 80 thousand euros) and some of Piero Gilardi’s famous carpets-nature (50 to 100 thousand euros). At Repetto Gallery, on the other hand, for a work by Pier Paolo Calzolari from 1943 the request is 450 thousand euros. And if we’re talking about historicized names, Transavanguardia obviously cannot be missed: interesting works by Enzo Cucchi at Colli’s booth, starting with the bronze sculpture Idolo della Quercia (25 thousand euros), but also notable are the drawings and works on canvas (12-24 thousand euros), while Matteo Lampertico offers a relevant selection of works by Nicola De Maria (prices not revealed). As for large photography, Vistamare offers two relevant pieces by Mimmo Jodice, while at Viasaterna one can see a large selection of works by Guido Guidi in the Monologue section (range from 7 to 30 thousand euros).
Magazzino offers a pair of works by Monica Bonvicini, Bitch and Wamp, sprays on Fabriano paper (50 thousand euros) that offer a precise representation of femininity to which Rolando Anselmi ’s stand seems to respond, a short distance away, exhibiting the beautiful paintings on canvas by the Polish, born in 1981, Adéla Janská (8.500 euros i.e.) whose work is dense with portraits of doll-like women who become symbols of an intriguing and unattainable femininity. And still on the subject of female art, Studio Trisorio ’s booth stands out among the best, where two small works by Louise Bourgeois can be seen, a 2007 Self portrait on paper (150 thousand euros t.e.), a 1997 Small Eye , a small sculpture in polished aluminum and lead 12 centimeters high (52 thousand euros t.e.), as well as two important pieces by Jenny Holzer, namely Fuzzy from 2016 (215,300 euros t.e.) and the 2019 Dormo marble bench with a quote by poet Patrizia Cavalli (“Love scouts me when I sleep / That’s why I sleep,” 366 thousand euros t.e.). Christiane Löhr’s small sculptures are also worth seeing: delightful Small Dome, a small dome, made from the ears of a grass, what in some parts of Italy are “forasacchi” (16,275 euros).
As might be expected, the artists convened for the 2025 edition of the Rome Quadriennale are very much in attendance. At SpazioA, a recent canvas by Luca Bertolo, The Tormentors 2, is on sale for 9,000 euros, and again to stay on topical names, at the Pistoia gallery’s stand there is also a sculpture by Chiara Camoni, who has just been chosen as the artist for the Italian Pavilion at the 2026 Biennale: for her Odalisca, glazed stoneware with vegetable ash, earth, sand and minerals, the request is 14,000 euros. Richard Saltoun , on the other hand, offers a rich selection of new paintings by Bea Scaccia, among the most interesting artists on show at the Quadriennale: prices range from 1,800 to 17 thousand euros. And again, Monitor has recent paintings by Matteo Fato for sale, with prices ranging from 6-7 thousand euros. In the Dialogue section, on the other hand, here are Lulu Nuti’s sculptures on display at ADA (4.5-7 thousand euros) in dialogue with paintings by Polish artist Alicja Pakosz (1.5-6 thousand euros). Two works by Arcangelo Sassolino, on the other hand, can be seen at Repetto Gallery , both renewing the Venetian artist’s challenge to the resistance of matter: Sospensione della scelta is a boulder resting on a glass cup while Piegare il tempo is a curved sheet of glass held by a strap (30 thousand and 35 thousand euros). Both are works from 2022: to see a work from this year, an untitled, by Sassolino one must move to the Galleria Continua booth (75 thousand euros).
Also interesting at Galleria Continua, works by Alicja Kwade, one of the important names in European art: her Adoption of specific properties is also priced at 75 thousand euros (i.e.). As for foreign artists, Deborah Schamoni ’s booth in the Dialogue section is interesting, offering a small exhibition comparing the works of Judith Hopf with those of Nicole Wermers, both artists who grew up in West Germany in the 1970s, both interested in examining the visual language of everyday life, the structures of urban spaces, their designs, and the mechanisms of social organization: from here descends a visual vocabulary that seeks to bring the uncanny into the everyday. Here then is Nicole Wermers’ systole that becomes a long tail to be unrolled at will(Domestic Tail, 2025) and Judith Hopf’s concrete tire, prices ranging from 15 to 30 thousand euros. Mor Charpentier brings to Artissima a new series by Colombian artist Nohemí Pérez that mixes the naïve landscapes of Henri Rousseau with real landscapes of the Amazon devastated by deforestation: an example is the canvas El tigre de Rosseau from 2025 (range 30-40 thousand euros). And still speaking of art that looks at current events, Layr offers some works from 1985 by Slovak avant-garde artist Stano Filko (1937-2015) dedicated to the scourge of AIDS: his AIDS Paintings sell for 18,000 euros (i.e.). Those, on the other hand, who want to take home a piece of Africa without big outlays will benefit greatly from a visit to the booth of First Floor Gallery, a gallery in Harare, Zimbabwe: Anne Zanele Mutema’s Sanative Pains are on sale for 2,250 euros, while Troy Makaza’s miniatures, which make their debut in Turin, are priced from 600 euros to just over 1,000. Of great impact in the Monologue section are the orange pencil drawings by Portuguese Pedro A.H. Paixão, brought to Artissima by Galeria 111, selling for 9,000 euros. By contrast, there is not much to report in the New Entries section, perhaps one of the scarcest of recent Artissima editions: the only artist who seemed convincing is the Latvian, class of 1996, Agate Tuna exhibited at Asni’s booth, who offers a series of paintings and mixed media entitled Voltentity, a kind of visual diary of sensations she calls “visible and invisible” that trace the capacities of energy, memory and identity to transform elements under the influence of technology (prices between 2 and 3 thousand euros).
Among the best-known Italian names, Studio Sales offers, for example, one of Stefano Arienti’s typical “pongo” paintings that explore the great masterpieces of Impressionist art with the plasticine we used as children, in this case the very famous portrait of Berthe Morisot painted by Édouard Manet (18,000 euros i.e.), and some new paintings by Romina Bassu that take home 2,800 euros (i.e.). And again, Cardelli&Fontana offers some works by one of the most interesting young Italian artists, Marco Salvetti, with prices ranging from 1,700 to 2,600 euros, as well as a couple of interesting works by Fabrizio Prevedello, one of which reinstates a sculpture from 2000(Biografia416, 8 thousand euros), and new landscapes by Mirko Baricchi (8,800 euros). Francesca Antonini ’s stand offers some beautiful paintings by Alice Faloretti (2 to 12,000 euros), while at 1/9unosunove one can instead see a huge canvas by Pietro Moretti, one of the largest works at this edition of Artissima, two meters by four and a half (26,000 euros i.e.), along with smaller works, landscapes on paper, sold for 1,250 euros (i.e.). Also at the same booth, the surrealist revival brings us the works of Tura Oliveira, watercolors on paper sketching dreamlike landscapes (2,000 euros i.e.). At the Materia booth, Marta Mancini presents a series of newly conceived small paintings that mark a fundamental chapter in her pictorial research and embody the desire to reconfigure the principles of her approach, opening up new visual and emotional registers (various prices from 1,000 to 3,000 euros).
We close with the most interesting things from the curated sections. The rough works by the Slovenian collective IRWIN, one of the leading names of NSK, a Slovenian avant-garde movement of the 1980s that is still little known in Italy but was among the most important experimentations in Europe at the time, stand out: the works brought by Gregor Podnar in the Back to the future section range from 5 to 82 thousand euros. And also in the same section, Gian Marco Casini rediscovers an important forgotten Leghorn artist, Renato Spagnoli: the works in the booth impress with prices ranging from 2,800 euros for the smallest works to 40,000 for the largest work, Report 4 from 1978. For the Present future section, the works of the Portuguese, class of 1992, João Gabriel (13,000 euros), marked by a strong eroticism, at the Lehmann stand, and those of the duo Mountaincutters at the Meessen stand are worth seeing: degraded materials, dirty objects, dust and rust invading the surfaces (8,500 euros). As for the Drawings section, the works of French artist Orianne Castel at the Analix Forever gallery stand out, which pays homage to the architectural structures of the greats of ancient art history, from Giotto to Beato Angelico, Lippo Memmi to Altichiero di Zevio (but they range all the way to Morandi), with prices ranging from 1.300 euros for a single drawing to 22 thousand for the series of 20, and Karine Rougier’s delightful watercolors at the Les Filles du Calvaire booth (2,500 to 4,500 euros).
Artissima 2025 thus closes with the distinct impression of a fair that has achieved a new self-awareness. After oscillating seasons, between the search for a changing identity and the need to reaffirm its centrality on the international scene, the Turin fair seems to have found a rare point of equilibrium: a balance between ideal drive and concreteness, between intellectual tension and market pragmatism.
What is striking in this edition is the measure. A measure that does not mean prudence, but awareness. This year Artissima would seem to have chosen to speak a clear, respectful, open language. The increasing transparency in prices, the plurality of proposals that manage to coexist without hierarchy or prevarication, are signs of a cultural maturation and a change of pace. It is, in the end, about building trust.
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