The exhibitions to see in August 2025 in Italy From houses that tell love stories to site-specific installations among the forests of Abruzzo
In a summer that seems to stretch the days until it melts the edges of our bodies and lives, art returns to speak of what is closest: the body, the home, absence, desire. From the galleries of Trento to the luxurious residences of Sicily, exhibitions centered on intimacy are multiplying. But it’s never a domestic or peaceful kind of intimacy. It’s a living, layered matter, pulsing just beneath the surface. Painting becomes emotional writing, sculpture turns into flesh, skin, pore. Artists no longer look far away, no longer chase elsewhere, they dig inward, into affections, relationships, memories that won't let go. Like the humidity in August. Some portray their mother as a luminous apparition, others sculpt wet, beautiful bodies that seem to hold their breath. The works move between melancholy and vibration, between fragment and narrative. It's an emotional and political summer, where the human figure returns to center stage, becoming a mirror. It's us, or it could be. Seen up close, a little blurred, vulnerable, and full of grace.
Art exhibitions to see in Italy this August 2025
Daniele Ratti - Naples
What does a house say about who we are? How much love hides behind a peeling wall, a vintage sofa, a dachshund-shaped ornament, or a hand-drawn armchair? Daniele Ratti answers these questions in one of the most intense photography exhibitions in Naples: Due cuori e una capanna, hosted in the Gallerie d’Italia on Via Toledo. The project, 42 photographs curated by Benedetta Donato, is an intimate journey into the deep connection between architecture and emotion, between built space and lived space. The images capture extraordinary places not just for their lines or materials, but for the stories they hold. There's Le Cabanon, the tiny retreat designed by Le Corbusier as a love declaration to his wife Yvonne Gallis. There's the modernist villa E-1027 by Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici, a visionary manifesto of a relationship built also through chairs and rugs. Also featured is the Dome designed by architect Dante Bini for Antonioni and Monica Vitti in Sardinia, Casa Guidi of poets the Brownings in Florence, and the home of Angela and Mimmo Jodice in Posillipo. These are spaces inhabited by affection, artworks that are also emotional archives. A reflection on the concept of living as an act of love, and on architecture as a trace of emotional memory, rendered visible through Ratti’s delicate gaze. Unmissable for those seeking art exhibitions in Naples where aesthetics, biography, and romanticism converge.
Title: Due cuori e una capanna
When: Until September 14, 2025
Where: Gallerie d’Italia, Naples
8 albe - Noto
In the heart of Sicily, within the evocative Dimora delle Balze in Noto, 8 albe returns. Now in its third edition, the contemporary art program selects the theme Sunsets: Cosmogonies and Ends of the World: 25 video art pieces shown across four evenings (July 31, August 7, 21, 28). Works by international artists and collectives, from Camille Henrot to Yin-Ju Chen, from the Karrabing Film Collective to Cauleen Smith, create a hypnotic, cyclical narrative that begins with the end and returns to the beginning. The world they portray is one of fragile knowledge, loss, post-colonialism, and a desire to build new imaginaries. More than just an exhibition, it’s a meditative practice: on time, on the end of worlds, and on the possibility of rebirth. In a time that no longer knows how to imagine the future, 8 albe explores the evocative power of contemporary art to envision new horizons. It offers no solutions, only perspectives. And those perspectives are necessary.
Title: Tramonti: Cosmogonie e Fini del Mondo
When: Until August 28, 2025
Where: Dimora delle Balze, Noto
Lovett/Codagnone - Milan
At PAC in Milan, the exhibition I Only Want You To Love Me marks the first retrospective in Italy dedicated to the duo Lovett/Codagnone, formed in 1995 by John Lovett and Alessandro Codagnone, the Milanese artist who passed away in 2019. The title, which reads like both a plea and a provocation, perfectly captures the tension running throughout the entire exhibition. The photographs, videos, installations, and performances explore power and dependency, desire and conflict, affection and resistance. But also underground culture, subcultures, queer identity, and rebellion. The duo always operated on the fringes, exposing the power dynamics that govern both personal relationships and social systems. The show includes a new neon piece created specifically for this occasion. It’s both a tribute to Codagnone and a generational legacy for those searching for new forms of subjectivity today. PAC offers a punk, radical, and emotional narrative—an invitation to reflect on who we are and whom we choose to love.
Title: I Only Want You To Love Me
When: Until September 14, 2025
Where: PAC – Contemporary Art Pavilion, Milan
Velasco Vitali - Pescasseroli
In a world that rushes by, Stasis is an invitation to pause. The site-specific installation by Velasco Vitali marks the eighth edition of ArteParco, an open-air museum nestled in the ancient forests of the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio, and Molise. A sculpted, proud Apennine wolf stands atop an oak trunk, both a symbol of wild freedom and a sentinel of our relationship with nature. Vitali draws inspiration from the stylites, ancient ascetics who lived on pillars to be closer to the divine. Here, spirituality and materiality blend. Stasis joins the works of Megx, Marcantonio, Matteo Fato, Sissi, and others, varied ways of adding beauty to the already stunning natural surroundings without overpowering them. Planning your route to get there? Good, because ArteParco is more than just an outdoor exhibition, it’s a journey. Literally. It’s a trek among centuries-old beeches and artworks, a chance to rediscover the joy of time spent in nature.
Title: Stasis
When: Until August 31, 2025
Where: National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, Pescasseroli
Gianmaria Potenza - Venice
If you're looking for an exhibition that skillfully connects art and technology, don’t miss Elaborating New Codes in Venice. Hosted at Palazzo Ferro Fini, this monographic show is dedicated to Gianmaria Potenza’s Elaboratori, works created in the 1990s in response to the early digital era. The Venetian artist reinterprets its signals with his unique visual language: compositions of wood, bronze, and marble inspired by circuit boards, codes, and modularity. Also on display are more recent pieces that show the coherent evolution of his poetic approach. Potenza doesn’t use computers or software, instead, he reworks the structures of digital thought into tactile, rhythmic, almost musical sculptures. Curated by Valeria Loddo, this show is not just a tribute to his work, but a broader reflection on visual language as a constantly evolving code.
Title: Gianmaria Potenza Elaborating New Codes
When: Until October 17, 2025
Where: Palazzo Ferro Fini, Venice
Maria Paola Landini - Bologna
Among the photography exhibitions to see in Italy this August, Portrait of a Woman by Maria Paola Landini at the Civic Archaeological Museum of Bologna stands out. A biologist and photographer, Landini merges science and sensitivity to construct a visual genealogy of femininity through 138 photographs taken over 50 years. The images engage in dialogue with 21 historical artifacts: statues, vases, inscriptions, votive objects. The result? A layered narrative unfolding across six thematic sections that traverse space and time: from the contemporary woman “as she is,” to ancient archetypes, rituals, social roles, and women's ingenuity. All of this is enriched by an interdisciplinary public program, transforming the exhibition into a space for dialogue. Here, photography does not aestheticize, it documents, observes, and respects. Female presence becomes living testimony, embodied memory. The exhibition becomes a sensory and political narrative of femininity, where the present meets myth.
Title: Ritratto di donna. Fotografie di Maria Paola Landini
When: Until October 13, 2025
Where: Civic Archaeological Museum, Bologna
Antonio Ligabue - Lecco
At the Palazzo delle Paure in Lecco, Antonio Ligabue and the Art of the Outsiders presents a path that explores the tormented yet powerful link between art and madness. At the heart of the exhibition, curated by Simona Bartolena, are 14 works by Ligabue. Nicknamed “Toni al matt” (“Crazy Toni”) by the inhabitants of the Po Valley, where he spent much of his life, Ligabue was self-taught, visionary, and was institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals multiple times. Alongside him in this Lecco project are about forty works by Carlo Zinelli, Pietro Ghizzardi, Gino Sandri, and other artists who, like Ligabue, experienced psychiatric confinement—seen either as punishment or a source of creative discovery. Together, the collection tells stories of lives lived on the margins, painful yet full of light and talent. What unfolds is a visual poem of radical differences. In an age of normalization, outsider art reminds us that fragility is also strength, and that diversity is a cultural value. That alone makes the trip to Lecco worth it.
Title: Antonio Ligabue e l'arte degli outsider
When: Until November 2, 2025
Where: Palazzo delle Paure, Lecco
MONSTRA - Brescia
What does it mean to be a monster today? The exhibition MONSTRA, held in the evocative setting of the former Church of San Giorgio in Brescia, seeks to answer this by presenting a contemporary bestiary of hybrids, fears, and dystopian visions. Curated by Alchemica, this second installment of the project explores the concept of “monstrosity” as both a critical and poetic tool. Here, the “monster” is no longer something to be rejected, but rather something that forces us to rethink ourselves. Unease becomes fertile ground; deformity becomes an alternative beauty. One of the boldest exhibitions of the summer, it invites us to engage with our shadow sides and discover freedom in anomaly. Featured artists include Laurina Paperina, Naomi Gilon, and Alberto Martini.
Title: MONSTRA. Una mostra prodigiosa
When: Until August 31, 2025
Where: C.AR.M.E. Cultural Association, Brescia
Nebojša Despotović - Trento
With Tutte le nostre vite, Nebojša Despotović away from the visual archive that had long fueled his painting and finally turns his gaze inward, toward his home and loved ones. The exhibition at the Civic Gallery of Trento features previously unseen works from recent years, along with a large polyptych created specifically for the show, titled In the Garden of My Life. The colors are muted, leaning toward sepia and black and white, yet the emotionally charged and unsettled compositions retain their strength. At the center is family: mother, daughters, presence and absence, grief and care. The bodies appear suspended, held in time, like in a dream of return. Painting becomes an affectionate gesture, a diary hovering between intimacy and melancholy. If you want to delve deeper into Despotović’s poetics, this exhibition in Trento is a must.
Title: Nebojša Despotović. Tutte le nostre vite
When: Until October 5, 2025
Where: Civic Gallery, Trento
Carole A. Feuerman - Rome
Sculptural, carnal, hyperrealistic: Carole A. Feuerman’s voice is heard in the silence of bodies. Palazzo Bonaparte hosts the first major Italian retrospective of the American artist, who since the 1970s has explored the human condition through lifelike female figures, brimming with emotion, memory, and desire. Water droplets, breath, tattoos, every detail vibrates with life. Her sculptures, crafted in resin, bronze, and silicone, portray identities that are both fragile and powerful, suspended between reality and imagination. On display are more than 50 works, including a large site-specific installation. The body, in all its beauty and weariness, becomes a universal language: a presence that endures, a symbol that speaks to us all.
Title: CAROLE A. FEUERMAN. La voce del corpo
When: Until October 5, 2025
Where: Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome
Mimmo Jodice. Naples Metaphysical – Naples
In Naples, at the Cappella Palatina, the Chapel of the Souls in Purgatory, and the Armory of Castel Nuovo, the solo exhibition Mimmo Jodice. Naples Metaphysical is on display—an important tribute to one of the masters of contemporary photography. Without ever leaving his hometown, Mimmo Jodice has remained—and continues to be—one of its most poetic and profound interpreters. The exhibition is structured around chapters inspired by archetypes of the metaphysical imagination: Distances, Arches, Columns, Statues, Monuments, Shadows, Apparitions, and Voids. The show features over fifty evocative photographic portraits of Naples, rich with references to Metaphysical art, placed in visual dialogue with paintings by Giorgio de Chirico. The result is a new portrait of Mimmo Jodice as a spiritual artist, able to transform places into fragments of unpredictable, timeless still lifes.
Title: Mimmo Jodice. Naples Metaphysical
When: until September 1, 2025
Where: Cappella Palatina, Chapel of the Souls in Purgatory, and Armory of Castel Nuovo, Naples