7 Inspiring Exhibitions To See In Bilbao, Florence, Lisbon, London & Sintra
Dame Tracey Emin and Sir Grayson Perry are celebrated with solo exhibitions at the suitably palatial Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and Wallace Collection in London, while Performance artist Leigh Bowery has a posthumous retrospective at Tate Modern. Brazilian Modernism has a moment at the Royal Academy of Arts and Guggenheim Bilbao, a new foundation dedicated to ceramics opens in Sintra and Paula Rego is exhibited with Adriana Varejão at Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon.
Grayson Perry (c) Richard Ansett, shot exclusively for the Wallace Collection, London (c) Richard Ansett, shot exclusively for the Wallace Collection, London
From London’s esteemed arts institutions Tate Modern, Royal Academy of Arts and the Wallace Collection, to acclaimed European museums including the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon and Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, there are a wealth of new exhibitions to see in Spring 2024.
Leigh Bowery, Legendary Australian performance artist and fashion designer who was a fixture on London’s vibrant 1980s clubbing scene, is given a posthumous Swan song in the form of a retrospective at Tate Modern, which will celebrate its 25th birthday this year.
Tracey Emin, the former renegade YBA turned national treasure and newly appointed Dame, will be exhibiting at Florence’s historic Palazzo Strozzi, while Sir Grayson Perry, another controversial artist who went on to be awarded and adopted by the British establishment with a 2023 Knighthood, takes over the Wallace Collection in London with his contemporary ceramics as he celebrates his 65th birthday.
Ceramics are also celebrated in Portugal, which has a historic appreciation of ceramic art dating back to the 15th Century when the Portuguese began importing Chinese porcelain. The Albuquerque Foundation in Sintra will open in February with an inaugural exhibition by US Artist Theaster Gates. The foundation will house Brazilian collector Renato de Albuquerque’s world-class collection of Chinese Ming and Qing Dynasty Export ceramics. Also in Portugal, the art of Paula Rego and Adriana Varejao will be celebrated at the Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon.
The Guggenheim Bilbao will present a retrospective survey show of Tarsila do Amaral, an important figure in the Brazilian Modernism movement. Tarsila do Amaral will also be featured in Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism, a major group exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Here is my selection of exhibition highlights to provide some creative inspiration during the dark winter months as we head towards the more hopeful light-filled days of Spring Equinox.
Leigh Bowery at Tate Modern ( February 27th to August 31st, 2025).
Image credit: Fergus Greer, Leigh Bowery Session I Look 2 1988 © Fergus Greer. Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery. © Fergus Greer. Courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery.
Australian performance artist, designer, model and musician Leigh Bowery (1961-1994) was a Renaissance man who pushed the boundaries of art and gender, bursting onto the London post-punk club scene in the 1980s and making an impact on the worlds of fashion and art. In his short but extraordinary life, Bowery forged a truly unique path. His shapeshifting, gender fluid persona and unique fashion sense paved the way for Avant-Garde fashion designers and performers including Alexander McQueen, Lady Gaga and Anohni.
Tate Modern will dedicate its first exhibition slot of 2025—its quarter century birthday—to Bowery and his legacy featuring many of Bowery’s ‘Looks’ alongside collaborations with artists including Michael Clark, Charles Atlas, Nick Knight, Fergus Greer, Stephen Willats, Nicola Rainbird, Mr Pearl, and Lucian Freud.
‘Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude’ at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, (March 16th to July 20th, 2025).
Tracey Emin Naked photos – Life Model Goes Mad I 1996 giclée on photo rag paper 53,5 × 53 cm edition of 3, with 2AP Courtesy of the Artist. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis). © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)
Curated by Arturo Galansino and enigmatically titled ‘Sex and Solitude’, Tracey Emin’s solo exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence will be her debut show in an Italian institution. Seminal works from Emin’s early career will be juxtaposed with contemporary works including paintings, works on paper, installations and sculptures. A deep dive into Emin’s oeuvre from the past thirty years, the exhibition will feature her honest, visceral depictions of the female body and often deeply personal images of love, loss, illness and pain.
‘Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur’ at the Wallace Collection, London (March 28th to October 26th, 2025).
Grayson Perry, I Know Who I Am, 2024 © Grayson Perry. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro © Grayson Perry. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro
Britain’s best-loved potter Grayson Perry is the subject of the Wallace Collection’s largest contemporary exhibition to date. Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur will feature Perry’s distinctive vases as well as tapestries and works on paper, hung amongst masterpieces from the Wallace Collection that provided inspiration for the artist.
Perry pays homage to Outsider artists in the exhibition and includes works by Aloïse Corbaz and Madge Gill, who exhibited at the Wallace Collection in 1942. More than 40 new works will be exhibited including handcrafted and digitally created pieces that pose questions about the very act of making art.
More than 40 new works will be exhibited including handcrafted and digitally created pieces that pose questions about the very act of making art. works by Aloïse Corbaz and Madge Gill, who exhibited at the Wallace Collection in 1942.
The Albuquerque Foundation, Sintra, Portugal (opening on February 22nd, 2025).
The Albuquerque Foundation. Photo Francisco Nogueira. Courtesy of The Albuquerque Foundation Courtesy of The Albuquerque Foundation
Envisioned by Brazilian collector Renato de Albuquerque and his granddaughter Mariana Teixeira de Carvalho, the Albuquerque Foundation is a new center dedicated to ceramics opening to public in Sintra on 22nd February 2025. American artist Theaster Gates will inaugurate the contemporary program with a solo exhibition of curated sculptural ceramics.
The Albuquerque Foundation will be the permanent home to the world’s largest private collection of Chinese Ming and Qing Dynasty Export ceramics, which took Renato more than six decades to assemble and comprises over 2,600 rare pieces. In the 15th century, Portugal played an important role in the cross-cultural exchange between East and West 15th Century when the Portuguese began to import Chinese porcelain.
The Albuquerque Foundation is situated on the fringes of Lisbon in Sintra, a UNESCO World Heritage site and as well as the permanent collection of ceramics will house a pavilion dedicated to temporary exhibitions of contemporary ceramics, as well as artist residencies, a library and a restaurant.
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (January 28th to April 21st, 2025).
Tarsila do Amaral, Lake, 1928. Oil on canvas, 75.5 x 93 cm. Collection of Hecilda and Sérgio Fadel. Photo: Jaime Acioli. ©️ Tarsila do Amaral S/A ©️ Tarsila do Amaral S/A
More than 130 works by ten celebrated 20th century Brazilian artists will take centre stage in the main galleries of the RA in Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism, an ode to the Brazilian Modernist movement. Brazil’s modernist movement kicked off in the 1910s and and peaked in the 1970s, capturing the diversity of the country and referring to indigenous identiy and Afro-Brazilian experience whilst embracing international trends.
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism will present works from Brazilian private and public collections for the first time in the UK. Afro-Brazilian artist Rubem Valentim and performance artist Flávio de Carvalho will feature as well as self-taught artists Alfredo Volpi and Djanira da Motta e Silva. Anita Malfatti spearheaded the movement and will feature prominently in the exhibition as well as Tarsila do Amaral, a leading female figure of Brazilian Modernism.
Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil at Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (February 21st to June 1st, 2025).
Tarsila do Amaral Seamstresses (Costureiras), 1950 Oil on canvas 73.3 × 100.2 cm Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, gifted by Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, inv. 1963.1.243. ©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A. Photo: ©Romulo Fialdini ©Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A. Photo: ©Romulo Fialdini
The Guggenheim Bilbao will present a major survey show dedicated to Tarsila do Amaral (b. 1886; d. 1973), a key figure of Brazilian modernism whose work is also being featured in Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil, is co-organised by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux–Grand Palais and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and was first presented at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in autumn 2024.
do Amaral’s oeuvre was infused with indigenous imagery and a sense of activism, and it referenced the modernizing forces of a rapidly-transforming Brazil. Her painting was the root of the Pau-Brasil and ‘Anthropophagic’ movements, whose search for an ‘authentic’, multicultural and multiracial Brazil aimed to refound the country's relationship with the European ‘centers’ of colonization. Tarsila divided her time between avant-garde São Paulo and Paris in the 1920s and was influenced by the avant-garde of these two cultural capitals at a time when Cubism and Primitivism were dominant artistic movements.
‘Paula Rego & Adriana Varejão: Entre os vossos dentes’ at Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisbon, Portugal (April 11th to September 15th, 2025).
Pintura “A Primeira Missa no Brasil”, de Paula Rego, uma obra realizada em 1993. Courtesy of Centro de Arte Moderna
Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) in Lisbon will devote the main gallery of its new building to a landmark exhibition featuring 100 works by Paula Rego (b. 1935–2022) and Adriana Varejão (b. 1964). Paula Rego & Adriana Varejão: Entre os vossos dentes (Between Your Teeth) foregrounds the works of two women artists who came from different generations but occupied a similar space with themes of colonisation and identity. The starting point of the exhibition is Paula Rego’s 1993 painting A Primeira Missa no Brasil (The First Mass in Brazil), a rarely exhibited work belonging to a private British collection.
Rego and Varejão’s art explores experiences of women and power dynamics. The exhibition is curated by Helena de Freitas and presents the work of Adriana Varejão, a contemporary Brazilian artist who continues on a path of pioneering work developed on post-colonial research, with the politically charged art of the late Portuguese artist Paula Rego and reinterprets the power dynamics between their two generations.
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