The XV Florence Biennale of contemporary art and design took place on October 18–26, 2025, at the historic Fortezza da Basso in Florence.
The jubilee 15th edition centered on the theme “The Sublime Essence of Light and Darkness. Concepts of Dualism and Unity in Contemporary Art and Design.”
The organizers invited artists to rethink the timeless dualism of light and darkness through the lens of contemporary art, design, and creativity. Here, the notion of the “sublime” was considered not only aesthetically, but also as a tool for exploring acute social, environmental, and political issues. The anniversary Biennale aimed to emphasize the role of art as a universal language for understanding and reinterpreting reality.
Facts about the XV Florence Biennale 2025
The XV Florence Biennale became one of Italy’s and the world’s major art events of 2025. Spanning 11,000 m², it presented works by 550 artists and designers from 85 countries across all continents — over 1,500 pieces in total.
Unlike strictly curated biennials (such as Venice), the Florence exhibition is democratic and open: creators across genres apply and exhibit, competing for jury prizes. The showcase covered painting, sculpture, graphics, photography, digital and multimedia art, installations, as well as art-design and applied forms — from author’s object design to fashion.
Beyond the main exhibition, the program featured special projects, competitive and non-competitive sections, and a rich parallel program — from artist talks to performances.
Key Guests: Tim Burton and Patricia Urquiola
The most anticipated special guest was the legendary American director and artist Tim Burton, whose work perfectly embodies the dualism of light and darkness.
The Biennale hosted an exclusive personal exhibition, “Tim Burton: Light and Darkness,” conceived by Burton himself. It included 50 works grouped into five themed rooms — from rare drawings, sketches, and original characters to immersive installations. The display highlighted Burton’s signature mix of fantasy and dark grotesque: light and shadow, irony and melancholy, dream and nightmare coexist in his imagined worlds. For his unique contribution to visual culture, Tim Burton received the honorary “Lorenzo il Magnifico” Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony on October 21.
Another star of the Biennale was renowned Spanish designer and architect Patricia Urquiola. In the design section, she presented the interactive installation “Transition,” conceived as a sensorial journey through forms and materials. A semi-transparent wall of fir wood and recycled polycarbonate encouraged viewers to reframe space. The work united function and emotion, showing how object design can reflect dualism: strength and fragility, transparency and optical illusion.
For her outstanding contribution to contemporary design, Urquiola received the International Leonardo da Vinci Award for Achievement (Design) on October 23, following a public dialogue with Italian critic Silvia Roberazzi about new perspectives in design.
The Biennale also presented special tributes: the Lorenzo il Magnifico President’s Award to the association dedicated to Florentine artist and ceramist Oliviero Leonardi; a Career Award (In Memoriam) to Chilean artist Marcelo Mayorga (with a display of his works); and a dedicated memorial ceremony for Mario Paccioli, co-founder of the international Lorenzo il Magnifico prize.
Parallel Program: Dialogue of Cultures and Ideas
Alongside the exhibition, visitors enjoyed a packed program: daily talks, lectures, discussions, workshops, and film screenings. A special guest was noted curator and art historian Gregorio Luke (USA/Mexico), who delivered a lecture series on art history through the prism of eternal dualism. On October 22, Luke spoke about Rembrandt — master of light and shadow; on October 25 — about Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, whose work channels the drama of light and darkness in a social context.
On October 22 the official XV Florence Biennale catalogue (Giorgio Mondadori) was presented with curators Giovanni Cordoni and Jacopo Celona, and editor Carlo Motta. For the first time, the Biennale held a creative competition with LOQI, inviting young artists to design an eco-tote inspired by the theme; the winning idea was produced as a collectible series.
A standout event was “Maurizio Galimberti a Firenze” — a meeting with the iconic Italian photographer. On opening day, October 18, Galimberti held a talk and a photo performance at Villa Angela, sharing his vision of Florentine landscapes, light play, and architectural forms. Displayed alongside quotes by Baudelaire, Pessoa, and Calvino, his works created a poetic bridge between image and literature, history and the present.
Design Section and Special Projects
The 2025 Florence Biennale reaffirmed that it is as much about design as fine art. A large exhibition zone showcased projects from interior concepts to fashion objects. The “Tuscany Means Design” initiative (under ADI, the Italian Association for Industrial Design) presented Tuscan achievement; the curated exhibition “Trame” (curator Silvia Fanticelli) explored trends via material and space. A circular-economy project by Revet, R3Direct, and WASP showed how sustainable technologies translate into creative art objects.
The inter-university project “Archibiofoam” staged a dialogue between architecture and science, with students from Finland, Italy, and Germany. A collective photo exhibition, “Art Comes Before,” honored Florence photographer Manfredo Pinzauti. Overall, the design program demonstrated the unity of aesthetics and technology and how the boundary between artistic image and utilitarian object can blur — echoing the idea of unity in opposites.
Ukrainian Artists at the Florence Biennale 2025
Despite the war at home, Ukrainian women artists presented works that fit seamlessly into the “light and darkness” concept — each offering a distinct perspective.
- Anastasiia Novytska — a Ukrainian painter (now based in Italy) working in expressive oil. Her canvases are rich in texture, bold color, and vivid gesture. At the Biennale she showed a series devoted to the sea, exploring light–dark tensions through color and texture.
- Daria Kondratska — an artist from Zhytomyr region, living in Denmark. Trained as a designer, her practice blends applied and fine art. Since the full-scale invasion, she has supported Ukraine by selling art for charity and organizing workshops in Denmark. At the Biennale she presented two painting series, “Flowers” and “Herd Instinct” — combining clear composition with emotional expression. “Flowers” counterpose pain and loss with a beam of hope; “Herd Instinct” reflects on the vices of modern humanity.
- Sana Shaw — an interdisciplinary artist from Ukraine, now in the USA. She showed two works from “Fragility of Life,” dedicated to Ukrainian defenders. Her relief canvases explore life’s fragility amid war’s darkness and the power of light emanating from courage, love, and memory — merging baroque/decadent motifs with contemporary elements.
- Oksana Milanich — a Kharkiv artist known as a “portraitist of angels.” Unable to attend in person, she showed a series of angel paintings: “My angels are at the Biennale in Florence while I remain in Kharkiv, but art knows no borders…,” she said. Her luminous spiritual works embodied hope and protection amid the chaos of war.
Special recognition at the Florence Biennale 2025 went to Olena Hrynevych, whose series “Golden ∫kin” received the Fifth Prize (“Lorenzo il Magnifico”).
Hrynevych holds a Master’s in History and English Philology (Kyiv), studied graphic design (Projector, 2024) and cultural entrepreneurship (Travelling U & Mondragon University, Spain, 2024), and is in the NODE International Curatorial Program (Berlin, 2025–2026). At ArtBoxExpo Basel 2025, she created two works live — presenting collage as interactive art for the first time.
Her Biennale works continued exploring light–dark dualism, uniting digital abstraction, mathematical structures, and sensuous perception into a refined multilayered visual dialogue — demonstrating both artistic and intellectual depth characteristic of the contemporary international scene.
All “Lorenzo il Magnifico” medals are handcrafted by Picchiani & Barlacchi (Florence). Founded in 1902, the atelier preserves artisanal traditions, producing medals and prizes of the Florence Biennale. The obverse bears the profile of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the reverse reads BIENNALE INTERNAZIONALE DELL’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA — CITTÀ DI FIRENZE.
For Hrynevych, the medal became a symbol of international recognition and continuity of artistic tradition, reinforcing her status as a representative of Ukrainian contemporary art on the global stage.
The XV Florence Biennale will be remembered as a large-scale forum of artistic dialogue that united dozens of countries and thousands of visitors around the eternal theme of the struggle and unity of opposites. Threaded through the exhibitions and events was the idea that light and darkness do not exist without each other — and that art reveals their essence and seeks harmony. Within the walls of Fortezza da Basso, contemporary art and design spoke a common language of symbols, materials, and images to help people make sense of today’s complex reality. In 2025, the Florence Biennale reaffirmed itself as an open platform where elevated ideas take shape and the dualism of light and darkness becomes a source of creativity and unity.