While Turin's Piedmont region is famous for its fall truffle season, art enthusiasts have discovered an equally rich harvest at Artissima 2025. Italy's oldest contemporary art fair is showcasing 176 galleries at the expansive Oval Center through November 2nd, offering collectors and curators a diverse array of cutting-edge works across various price points.
Founded in 1994, Artissima has built a reputation for championing emerging artists and innovative galleries. The fair immediately distinguishes itself from other art events through its carefully curated sections, including Present Future for emerging talents, Back to the Future for rediscovered 20th-century artists, and Disegni for contemporary design. Unlike traditional art fairs that primarily focus on painting and sculpture, Artissima emphasizes performance art, moving image works, and process-based pieces.
The fair's significance extends beyond its artistic offerings, as evidenced by the attendance of prominent figures like collector Patrizia Sandretto de Rebaudengo, a Turin native whose foundation celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. "It's my fair not only because it is in my city, but it's a fair that in a certain way has grown with me, with the story of my foundation, and with the story of my collection," she explained, describing the event as "a fair of discovery."
Fair director Luigi Fassi positions Artissima as "a bridge between the Italian and international art scenes," with galleries representing 33 countries. The event benefits from Italy's recent reduction of VAT on art sales to 5 percent, the lowest in the European Union. "It's a big chance to raise the capability of the Italian system to compete," Fassi noted.
Among the standout works under $10,000, Karine Rougier's "Ode à la curiosité" (2025) commands attention at Galerie Les filles du calvaire for €4,500 ($5,202). This intimate pigment and watercolor piece on textured paper draws inspiration from 16th-century Indian miniature painting. The French artist, who teaches at the Fine Arts School of Marseille and represented Malta at the 2017 Venice Biennale, creates a surreal mountainous landscape where human figures in terracotta tones gaze toward a radiant sun with a human face. The sky features smaller celestial bodies with expressive faces, combining meticulous linework with jewel-like tones that evoke Mughal and Rajasthani manuscripts while maintaining a dreamlike, allegorical quality.
Beatrice Meoni's "La nota del lupo" (2025), priced at €2,500 ($2,890) at Cardelli & Fontana, represents another compelling option. This small-scale painting focuses on atmosphere rather than objects, featuring a warm palette of rusted reds and browns that imbue everyday items like figurines, ceramics, and books with emotional resonance. Gallery director Massimo Biava explains that the work reflects "the places where she works: her studio and her house," with Meoni consistently depicting quiet, introspective spaces through tactile, sculptural paint application.
Linda Fregni Nagler's "Professional Pet-sitter Jack Sofield Trusts Mac The Macaw 2" (2023) offers a fascinating photographic experiment for €8,000 ($9,248) at Monica De Cardenas. Currently featured in a solo exhibition at Turin's Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Nagler manipulates archival imagery from 20th-century American magazines. The work shows a man leaning toward parrots, but the gesture is fragmented and doubled through mirrors, creating a disorienting effect that merges human and animal forms into a visual puzzle.
Desire Moheb-Zandi's textile piece "To grow again" (2025) ranges from €5,000-7,500 ($5,780-8,670) at Berlin's Wentrup gallery. The work layers cotton, botanically dyed Turkish wool, and naturally dyed French hemp with upcycled Italian fibers, rope, and embroidery. Drawing on techniques learned from her grandmother, Moheb-Zandi explores rhythm, repetition, and transformation through weaving, creating distinct tactile layers that include mauve textures, satin filaments, and shaggy green sections.
Finally, Nobuhito Nishigawara's "Qualia 248" (2023) presents a compact ceramic sculpture for €4,750 ($5,491) at Luce Gallery. The Japanese-born, Los Angeles-based artist creates spiraling forms from clay ribbons glazed in soft pink, embedded with bluish ceramic stones. Gallery director Nikola Cernetic explains that Nishigawara's work examines "cultural identity, material transformation, and abstraction," drawing from "the memory of his life in Japan, and what it means for him and his family to transfer to L.A." The piece exemplifies controlled chaos, suggesting both vulnerability and resilience while transforming any surface it occupies.
