MUVEC Mestre: From Klimt and Schiele to Body Art, a Century of Unsettled Bodies

From September 26, 2026, to February 14, 2027, MUVEC – Casa delle Contemporaneità in Mestre, Italy, will host the exhibition "Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka e il corpo nell'arte contemporanea," curated by Elisabetta Barisoni. The show, located on the third floor of the new contemporary art museum of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, traces the evolution of the body in art from fin-de-siècle Vienna to the Body Art of the 1960s and 1970s. It begins with works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka, who transformed the body into a site of desire, the unconscious, and individual and collective tensions. The exhibition then moves through more lyrical and metaphysical representations by Felice Casorati and Cadorin, before reaching artists like Piero Manzoni and Yves Klein, who incorporated the body directly into the artistic process. The Body Art section features Gina Pane and Ana Mendieta, who used the body to question identity, social norms, and representation. The exhibition includes loans from major institutions such as the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, and the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, as well as works from private collections. The show is part of a series dedicated to 20th-century masters and their legacies, exploring how the body has served as a mirror of societal anxieties and transformations.