Jenny Saville, Focus, 2024, Olio su tela, 120 × 100 cm | Courtesy © Jenny Saville. All rights reserved, DACS 2026 | Gagosian | Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

In Venice, Ca’ Pesaro opens a major exhibition dedicated to Jenny Saville, one of the most recognizable figures in contemporary European painting. Curated by Elisabetta Barisoni, the show spans more than three decades, from the early 1990s to recent works. The exhibition gathers over thirty paintings and drawings, arranged not as a strict chronology but as a sequence that highlights continuity and internal shifts within the artist’s practice. Saville’s large-scale canvases, defined by dense layers of paint and altered figuration, maintain a sustained dialogue with tradition. References to Venetian painting, from Titian onwards, operate as structural confrontations rather than quotations. The body remains central. It is not treated as a stable subject but as a site where identity, perception and image-making intersect. Surfaces appear constructed, reworked and exposed as process. Recent works introduce more complex compositions, with multiple figures and overlapping forms. A new cycle conceived for Venice concludes the exhibition, placing the artist’s research in direct relation with the city’s painting tradition.

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