This fall, museums across Europe are launching new projects with big names, from old masters to radical contemporary artists. Rare retrospectives, collections from private collections and debuts in new spaces — we have gathered the key openings of the season.
Paris
Paul Troubetzkoy. The Sculptor Prince
From September 30 at the Musée d’Orsay, the first Paris retrospective of Pavel Trubetskoy, the Russian aristocrat and sculptor whose portraits of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Rodin are world-famous. He became a master of "living" sculpture and worked between Moscow, Paris, and Milan. He preferred spontaneity to academic rigor. The halls are filled with bronze, plaster, drawings and rare archival materials that reveal his ability to capture movement and character rather than pose.
George Condo
When: February 8th, 2026, October 10, 2025 On view through October 10 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is a major exhibition by George Condo, an American artist who combines the traditions of the Old Masters with the grotesque and ironic. His portraits with fractured facial expressions and displaced anatomy balance between caricature and psychological study. The exhibit spans several decades and highlights various aspects of his style.
Philip Guston: Irony/History
From October 14, the Picasso Museum will show late works by Philip Gaston, who in the late 1960s abandoned abstraction for figurative painting with political overtones. His large pink and gray canvases speak of violence, fears and personal memories. The Paris exhibition traces this turn and its impact on generations of artists.
Kandinsky: The Music of Color
From October 15, the Centre Pompidou and the Musée de la Musique present a joint project on the role of sound in the work of Wassily Kandinsky. Nearly 200 works and objects from the artist’s studio – scores, instruments, books – help trace how music became the basis of his abstract language. The multimedia rooms create a synaesthesia effect, allowing you to literally hear his paintings.
Gerhard Richter
From October 17, the Louis Vuitton Foundation presents a large-scale exhibition of Gerhard Richter, one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century. The halls are filled with abstractions, blurred photographs, landscapes and glass panels in which the image appears and disappears.
Bridget Riley: The Beginning
From October 21 at the Musée d’Orsay, early works by Bridget Riley, one of the key figures in British art of the second half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, she created her recognizable language of alternating stripes, waves and geometric shapes that transform a painting into an optical experience. The exhibition includes drawings and paintings, in which her handwriting was formed and her first experiments with color and rhythm appeared.
Exposition Générale
From October 25, the Fondation Cartier opens its new building opposite the Louvre and immediately launches its first project, Exposition Générale. Visitors to the exhibition will see selected works from the Foundation’s collection over the past forty years, from painting and photography to video art.
Art Basel Paris (Paris+)
From October 24 to 26 at the Grand Palais – the Parisian version of the world’s largest contemporary art fair. Special projects, meetings with artists, and leading galleries from Asia, Europe, and the United States make up the program. It is a key event of the art market, with dozens of exhibitions around the city.
Paris Photo
When: 13-16 November 2025 From November 13 to 16, the Grand Palais Éphémère will host the largest photography fair. More than 200 galleries and publishers will show works from the classics of the 19th century to experiments with new technologies. A separate section will be dedicated to photo books and rare archives.
Berlin
Petrit Halilaj: Syrigana
Since September 11, Kosovo artist Petrit Halilaji has been transforming the halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof into an installation dedicated to memories, lost homeland and personal myths. The project combines large-scale sculptural elements and details related to his childhood. The exhibition is constructed as an emotional landscape in which the viewer is physically immersed.
Max Ernst to Dorothea Tanning: Networks of Surrealism
From October 17, Neue Nationalgalerie explores surrealism through the creative and personal connections of the most prominent representatives of the movement. The focus is on Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning and the artists in their circle, whose works form a chain of mutual influences.
Annika Kahrs
From November 14, Annika Kars will present a project working at the intersection of sound and image. Her multimedia installations and videos explore communication and perception, creating situations in which familiar signals take on new meaning. In Berlin, she will invite viewers not just to observe, but to participate in the process.
Hommage an Vittore Carpaccio
An exhibit on the Venetian Renaissance master opens on November 20 at the Gemäldegalerie. The exhibition features Carpaccio’s works from museums and private collections in Europe, brought together in one space for the first time in decades. This is an opportunity to see his complex, multidimensional scenes, where biblical subjects are juxtaposed with images of everyday life in Venice.
Vienna
Gothic Modern
From September 19, the Albertina explores how artists of the 20th century reinterpreted Gothic motifs. The exhibition includes Munch, Beckmann, Kollwitz and other modernist masters whose works are placed in dialog with works from the Middle Ages. Among the themes are religious subjects and expressive images, in which medieval aesthetics acquires a modern sound.
Cézanne, Monet, Renoir. French Impressionism from Museum Langmatt
From September 25, the collection of French Impressionists from the Swiss Langmatt Museum will be on view in the Lower Belvedere. Monet’s landscapes, Cézanne’s still lifes and Renoir’s scenes, which rarely leave their native collection, will appear in a Viennese context for the first time. For the audience, this is an opportunity to see Impressionism in a chamber-like but very precise selection.
Marina Abramović
From October 10, Albertina Modern gives its halls to Marina Abramović. The performance legend will present key works and new projects that explore the limits of physical and emotional endurance. The exhibition combines video documentation, objects and live performances, engaging the viewer in the process itself.
Florence
Flowers: Soutine, De Pisis, Chagall
From September 16, the private museum Collezione Roberto Casamonti in Florence will present the project “Flowers: Sutin, De Pisis, Chagall.” The exhibition includes still lifes and landscapes by three twentieth-century artists working with the motif of flowers. Marc Chagall and Haim Sutin bring the experience of the avant-garde and the Parisian school to the theme. The Italian line is represented by Filippo De Pisis.
Fra Angelico
From September 26, a major project dedicated to Fra Angelico will open in Florence. Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo San Marco will bring together paintings, frescoes and manuscripts by the master, including recently restored works. This is a rare opportunity to see a significant part of his legacy in one of Italy’s most beautiful cities.
Helsinki
Sarah Lucas: NAKED EYE
From October 10, Kiasma Museum presents Finland’s first major retrospective of Sarah Lucas. The sculptures, installations and photographs by the artist, who is associated with the Young British Artists movement, explore themes of the body and sexuality. The exhibition spans almost forty years of work, while retaining her trademark humor and provocativeness.
Basel
Yayoi Kusama
From October 12, Fondation Beyeler presents the largest retrospective of a Japanese artist in Switzerland. Her early painting cycles, bright dot installations, "Infinite Rooms," and new projects span seven decades. Madrid
Pollock, Warhol, and Other American Places Where: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
From October 21, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum opens an exhibition dedicated to American art of the mid-20th century. At the center are Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, whose approaches to painting were shaped in very different artistic environments. In addition to their works, there are works by their contemporaries, archival photographs and documents that reveal the atmosphere of New York in the 1950s and 1970s.
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