Artissima 2025 – 32nd Edition
Artissima, Italy’s leading contemporary art fair and one of Europe’s most dynamic platforms for experimental artistic practices, returns for its 32nd edition. Directed for the fourth consecutive year by Luigi Fassi and organised with the support of Intesa Sanpaolo, the fair reaffirms its commitment to cutting-edge research, curatorial innovation, and international dialogue. With 176 participating galleries, including 63 monographic projects, Artissima once again transforms Torino into a global hub for artists, curators, collectors, and institutions, continuing its legacy as a laboratory of ideas and a catalyst for cultural exchange.
The 2025 edition of Artissima strengthens its unique position on the international art scene as the only Italian fair dedicated exclusively to contemporary art. Its model integrates the commercial and institutional dimensions of the art world, fostering an environment where galleries, museums, foundations, and collectors converge. Under Luigi Fassi’s direction, Artissima cultivates an atmosphere of discovery and intellectual exchange, drawing attention to new artistic languages and research-driven practices that address the urgencies of the present.
The fair is articulated into seven sections: four selected by the fair’s committee—Main Section, New Entries, Monologue/Dialogue, and Art Spaces & Editions—and three curated by international teams—Present Future, Back to the Future, and Disegni. Together, they form a cohesive yet diverse panorama of contemporary artistic production. The Main Section gathers leading international galleries, while New Entries introduces twelve young galleries appearing for the first time. Monologue/Dialogue highlights focused presentations and experimental formats, and Art Spaces & Editions expands the field to include non-profit initiatives, artist editions, and project spaces.
The curated sections confirm Artissima’s critical depth: Present Future spotlights emerging talents, Back to the Future revisits pioneers of post-war and late 20th-century art, and Disegni celebrates drawing as a primary medium of artistic expression. This structural balance between market and research, past and present, provides the fair with its distinctive curatorial identity.
For 2025, Artissima draws inspiration from the visionary thinker Richard Buckminster Fuller and his 1969 publication Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. The theme invites a reflection on shared responsibility and collective imagination in navigating the planet’s complexities. As Luigi Fassi notes, the idea of an operating manual implies a need for cooperation, sustainability, and holistic thinking. Artists—visionaries capable of bridging disciplines—are imagined as pilots of this metaphorical spacecraft, offering perspectives that transcend short-term logic and instrumental reasoning. Artissima becomes a site where these trajectories of thought are visualised and collectively rewritten through artworks, encounters, and dialogue.
Present Future, curated by Léon Kruijswijk and Joel Valabrega, showcases ten artists whose practices engage with material experimentation and contemporary paradigms, revealing how artistic processes reflect ecological, social, and affective dynamics.
Back to the Future, curated by Heike Munder and Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, revisits the work of eleven artists active between the 1940s and 1990s, whose investigations into language, media, and cybernetics reshaped communication and perception.
Disegni, curated by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, focuses on the immediacy of drawing as the first materialisation of an idea, celebrating its autonomy and expressive depth through ten solo presentations.
Artissima’s ecosystem of prizes and funds continues to foster excellence and sustainability in the art sector. The Fondazione Arte CRT Acquisition Fund reaches its highest allocation in over a decade—€300,000—supporting acquisitions for GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna di Torino and Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. Thirteen prizes are awarded in collaboration with foundations and corporate partners, including the illy Present Future Prize, Tosetti Value Award for Photography, VANNI #artistroom Prize, and the Carol Rama Award. These initiatives affirm Artissima’s role as a platform for talent recognition and institutional collaboration, bridging artistic research with long-term cultural investment.
Artissima extends beyond the Oval, activating Torino’s broader cultural ecosystem through exhibitions, residencies, and collaborative projects. Highlights include The Screen is a Muscle curated by Luca Lo Pinto at Gallerie d’Italia – Torino, IDENTITY 2025: Mondi Possibili – Dialogues between Art and Literature, and New Acid at the Zoological Garden. Additional initiatives involve site-specific works at Hotel Principi di Piemonte, Pinacoteca Agnelli, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, as well as the MADE IN residencies connecting artists with regional industries. These partnerships emphasise the fair’s civic dimension and its role in shaping Torino’s cultural identity.
For 2025, Artissima renews its coordinated image in collaboration with the Torino-based design studio FIONDA. The new visual system reinterprets the fair’s historic logo into mirrored brackets, framing its multifaceted content and underlining its evolving identity. The bold pink palette amplifies its experimental and energetic spirit, symbolising both continuity and transformation. This graphic reinvention echoes the fair’s central theme—reflection, reinvention, and collective imagination as engines of cultural progress.
Over three decades since its founding, Artissima remains a vital force in contemporary culture—an observatory of trends, a laboratory of ideas, and a meeting point for diverse voices shaping the art of today and tomorrow. The 32nd edition reaffirms Torino’s role as a city that not only hosts but lives through art, transforming each autumn into an intense and visionary celebration of creativity, dialogue, and possibility.
