The best exhibitions in Southern Italy during the winter holidays

In the very heart of Naples' historic center, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore alla Pietrasanta, one of the city's most important Baroque churches, has been transformed into an exceptional exhibition venue for several years now. Until March 1, 2026, the exhibition Joan Mirò Per poi arrivare all'anima is on view, dedicated to the deep connection between Joan Miró and the word, an element that the artist considered to have the same plastic power as the pictorial sign. While words and images had already been in dialogue in his Peinture-poème since the 1920s, it was above all in his post-war graphic work that this relationship intensified, culminating in the lithograph Peinture = Poesie (1976). Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Vittoria Mainolti, the exhibition presents an important body of graphic works by Joan Mirò, focusing on his innovative use of printing techniques, his collaborations with poets, and the important role of graphics in the Catalan master's poetics.

Part of the Napoli Contemporanea 2025 program, Jim Dine. Elysian Fields brings the works of one of the most important contemporary American artists to the city. The exhibition stems from the dialogue between twenty-nine plaster sculptures and the monumental rooms of Castel Nuovo, establishing an evocative link between past and present. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the Palatine Chapel, where twenty-three plaster heads created over the last three years in the artist's studio in St. Gallen are on display: real or imagined portraits, shaped in a material that Dine considers alive, almost human in its fragility and imperfection. The title of the exhibition, curated by Vincenzo Trione, refers to the Elysian Fields, a mythological place destined for sages and heroes, evoking the heroic and visionary character of these works.

Roberto Cuoghi, winner of the 27th edition of the Pino Pascali Prize, is the protagonist of the exhibition currently on display at the Pino Pascali Foundation in Polignano a Mare, which will run until spring 2026. The award highlights the centrality of the relationship between the individual and society and the theme of metamorphosis in his work, expressed through sculpture, painting, sound, and installation, in a multidisciplinary practice close to the spirit of Pascali. Over the last twenty years, Cuoghi has developed specific techniques and processes for each series, experimenting with new languages and moving naturally from one medium to another. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Chantal Crousel and Hauser & Wirth, features the research and themes that have guided his work over the last decade.

Until January 24, 2026, MACTE in Termoli is hosting Scollamenti: La collezione in circolo, curated by Caterina Riva. The exhibition is the result of research into the works awarded the Termoli Prize since the 1960s, which now form the core of the permanent collection, and celebrates the prize's 70th anniversary, highlighting how, since 1955, it has recorded the dynamism of contemporary artistic languages. Alongside works by established artists such as Carla Accardi and Mario Schifano, the exhibition draws attention to works recently exhibited elsewhere, such as those by Riccardo Lumaca and Tomaso Binga, and to works restored by the Restoration School of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, without forgetting some works in poor condition, in order to encourage their restoration. Historical and artistic information sheets follow each work, providing in-depth research, trajectories, and biographies, including those of the most recent winners of the Prize, such as Riccardo Baruzzi.

On the seventieth anniversary of Andrea Pazienza's birth, MAXXI L'Aquila celebrates the great author with an exhibition project spread between Rome and Abruzzo. The stage in L'Aquila explores the decisive years of his formation, when Pazienza built his visual vocabulary. Over three hundred works are on display, many of which have never been seen before, such as childhood drawings, ink drawings, watercolors, and marker experiments, evidence of a practice in which tradition and pop language coexist. Organized chronologically and thematically, the exhibition also recounts Paz's connection with Abruzzo, with a focus on Convergenze, the gallery in Pescara that hosted his first solo exhibition in 1973.

Until March 29, 2026, the Puglisi Cosentino Foundation in Catania is hosting a collection of works – on loan for the first time – from the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, which houses the largest collection of Italian art from the last two centuries. Fifty-three works selected from over twenty thousand in the GNAMC catalog, displayed in the baroque Palazzo Valle, establish new dialogues with the Foundation's permanent collection. The selection, curated by Renata Cristina Mazzantini and Gabriele Simongini, offers a synthesis of the main directions of Italian art from the 1970s to the present day, accompanied by works by international artists linked to Italy, including Calder, Chin, Güneştekin, Kapoor, Kostabi, LeWitt, Rondinone, and Kiki Smith.

The SoutHeritage Foundation in Matera presents SUPERFICI CON:, an interactive exhibition that transforms its exhibition space – the Cappella dei Sette Dolori, a 16th-century noble chapel that has been restored and is part of Palazzo Viceconte in the historic Sassi district. The visual heritage of the walls, marked by frescoes, coats of arms, inscriptions, and traces of time, becomes part of the exhibition itinerary in relation to the site-specific works of Pierre Ardouvin, Stanley Brouwn, Andrea Francolino, Andrea Fraser, That's Painting Production, David Tremlett, and Ger van Elk, artists who interact with the wall surfaces as places that welcome images and membranes of exchange between the work and the viewer. Part of BIENALSUR 2025 – the decentralized contemporary art biennial that originated in Latin America, is active on several continents, and is dedicated to the cultural urgencies of the present – the exhibition features painting, photography, and installations in a show that does not take place “in a place” but “with a place,” inviting the public to read the walls as archives of memory.

The major retrospective dedicated to Antonio Ligabue lands at the Palazzo di Città in Cagliari, which is hosting Antonio Ligabue. La Grande Mostra until June 7, 2026. Curated by Francesco Negri and Francesca Villanti, the exhibition  builds a chronological narrative of the evolution of this great Italian artist's language. With sixty works, including oil paintings and drawings, it conveys the power of an artist capable of transforming restlessness and vulnerability into images of extraordinary strength. The exhibition follows the three periods defined by Sergio Negri: from his naïve beginnings to his more dense and articulate maturity, to the final phase of the 1950s and 1960s, marked by bold strokes and bright colors. Among rural scenes, animal fights, and self-portraits, Ligabue emerges far from clichés: a lucid, complex artist who, through painting, constructed a human and artistic truth that was profoundly his own.

Casa Flash Art was born from a former car repair shop in the Itria Valley, a few kilometers from Ostuni, which was transformed in 2024 into a contemporary art space by Gea Politi and Cristiano Seganfreddo, publishers of the historic magazine Flash Art. In this context, Zazou Roddam's exhibition introduces the work of the London-based artist – who took part in the Casa Flash Art residency program – with column sculptures that hold thousands of photographic negatives. Destined to disappear over time due to compression, light, and heat, these structures echo the proportions of the slides, transforming them into an anonymous archive where the images become private again. Born in 2000, Roddam uses materials recovered from auctions and warehouses, adopting unusual conservation practices to question what we choose to value.