November 20, 2024

The must-see exhibitions in Florence

All the must-see events

All the must-see art events in Florence:

Helen Frankenthaler at Palazzo Strozzi (until Jan. 26, 2025)

Palazzo Strozzi presents the largest retrospective ever organized in Italy dedicated to one of the most revolutionary artists of the 20th century. It is an in-depth overview of Helen Frankenthaler's output, placing her works in dialogue with those of contemporary artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, David Smith, Anthony Caro and Anne Truitt. The exhibition offers a journey through large canvases, works on paper and sculptures, building a path that enhances the artist's extraordinary originality.

Oltrecittà. Utopie e realtà. Da Le Corbusier a Gerhard Richter (until Jan. 19, 2025)

From September 26 to January 19, 2025, at Villa Bardini, the unprecedented exhibition OltreCittà. Utopias and Reality. From Le Corbusier to Gerhard Richter. Fondazione CR Firenze and Generali - Valore Cultura are launching a reflection on the macro-theme of cities that does not propose an ideal and future vision of urban centers but gives back a wide space to be able to still conceive it on a human scale. In the exhibition, curated by Lucia Fiaschi, Bruno Corà, Silvia Mantovani and Claudia Bucelli, the work Firenze III/XII by Gerhard Richter, today among the most influential artists in the international arena, is shown for the first time in an exhibition, translating the idea of the movement and dynamism of a city - Florence - that dematerializes before our eyes, as if we were observing it from the window of a train, to become something else.

Michelangelo e il Potere at Palazzo Vecchio (until 26 January 2025)

An exhibition curated by Cristina Acidini and Sergio Risaliti that takes place on the second floor of Palazzo Vecchio, between the Sala delle Udienze and the Sala dei Gigli. More than fifty works: sculptures, paintings, drawings, autograph letters and plaster casts chosen to illustrate Michelangelo's relationship with power, his political vision and his determination to put himself on a par with the powerful of the earth. The design and direction of the exhibition are by architect Guido Ciompi, in collaboration with architect Gianluca Conte of Guido Ciompi & partners.

Retroscena. Storie di resistenza e dissidenza nella collezione della ragione at Museo del Novecento (until April 2)

About eighty years after our country's struggle for liberation from Nazi-Fascism, the Museo Novecento is questioning the presence, in the Alberto Della Ragione Collection, of evidence regarding the relationship between artists and the historical events in which they participated between the 1920s and 1940s. The fulcrum of the exhibition is the works of masters who lived through, suffered or opposed the policies of fascism, going through the dark and terrible days of war and racial laws, those of cultural persecution, and finally the civil war. Artists who were loved by Della Ragione, a sensitive collector of an art compromised with the adventures of existence, with the pain and evil of living, drawn into the uprisings of resistance and rebellion to the darkest destiny of man and societies. Some of them, Mario Mafai, Antonietta Raphaël, Renato Guttuso, were even housed in the engineer's villa near Genoa to escape the persecution of the regime. The selected works make it possible not only to investigate the choices made by the naval engineer, who established intense human as well as professional relationships with many of the artists exhibited here, but also to question the work of these protagonists of Italian art in one of the darkest seasons of our recent history.

Teatro delle relazioni exhibition at the Ied and Palazzo Strozzi

Promoted and organised by IED Florence and Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the Teatro delle relazioni project investigates the concept of community in its various meanings: community as a space of belonging that shapes our way of living and being together, but also community as a practice of artistic creation that redefines new models of production and sharing. The initiative is divided into two venues: an exhibition at the new visual arts centre of IED Florence, in the former Teatro dell'Oriuolo (until 20 December), and a three-day performance in the spaces of the Strozzina at Palazzo Strozzi (28-30 November 2024) realised in collaboration with the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation. Through the works of Annamaria Ajmone, Agnese Banti, Aleksandar Đuravčević, Sara Leghissa, Franco Menicagli, Scuola di Santa Rosa (Francesco Lauretta and Luigi Presicce) and Wurmkos, Teatro delle relazioni offers an overview of several expressive languages - drawing, sculpture, performance, sound and participatory practices - and opens a reflection on the value of relationships in our present.

Skim at Hotel Savoy (until 28 November)

The Savoy Hotel hosts an exhibition by the Florentine artist Skim, in collaboration with the 21st edition of Corri La Vita. Entitled The Journey Between Sign and Colour, the exhibition invites guests to immerse themselves in a harmonious chaos of shapes and colours that celebrates life and everyday life. A dynamic perceptual balance that in every nuance of the artist's work celebrates the pace of life and its milestones, thanks to the works on display in the lobby and in the historic setting of the hotel that welcomes them. The Hotel Savoy confirms its commitment to the promotion of contemporary art and plays an active role in Florentine cultural events.