Layout and collections
The visitor route
A walk through Ca’ Pesaro’s rooms offers a fascinating journey through modern and contemporary art, starting with the civic collections acquired since the first Biennales. The permanent collections, which are always closely juxtaposed with the temporary exhibitions on the second floor, feature masterpieces of sculpture and painting from around the world.
Visiting the International Gallery of Modern Art means immersing oneself in a story that intertwines historical avant-garde movements – from Realism to Divisionism – to the experiments of the post-war period and post-modernism, all in the monumental setting of a baroque palace that also houses the precious collections of the Museum of Oriental Art on the top floor.
The International Gallery of Modern Art
The historical core of the Ca’ Pesaro collections was created thanks to purchases made by the City of Venice from the very first Biennales onwards. There have also been numerous donations: the first was in 1897 by Prince Alberto Giovanelli, followed by Baron Edoardo Franchetti, Baron Ernst Seeger, Mayor Filippo Grimani, the Association of Venetian Industrialists and Merchants, and many other patrons who purchased works to enrich the Gallery’s collections. The important De Lisi-Usigli bequest dates back to the 1960s, enriching the collections with works by Morandi, de Chirico, Carrà, Kandinsky, Miró, and Matta, while in 1990, the Wildt-Scheiwiller donation brought over 40 sculptures by Adolfo Wildt to Ca’ Pesaro.
Since 2015, the Gallery has received further important donations such as those from Panza di Biumo, De Angelis Testa, Prast, Sironi-Straußwald, Del Fabro, along with many others.
The permanent collection documents the evolution of art from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the contemporary era, through works by Medardo Rosso, Boccioni, Casorati, Gino Rossi, Arturo Martini, and iconic works by international artists such as Rodin’s The Thinker and Klimt’s Judith II (Salomé).
The Panza donation: American Art
The most recent donation dates back to 2026, when Rosa Giovanna Magnifico Panza di Biumo donated 60 works of contemporary art to the city of Venice, following on from an earlier donation in 2015 of 23 works of American contemporary art by artists such as David Simpson, Phil Simms, Lawrence Carroll, Gregory Mahoney, Julia Mangold and Richard Nonas, among others.
The 60 works donated in 2026 are also of great artistic and cultural significance and will enrich the civic collections. They include works by important figures in international art, such as Jene Highstein, Bernard Joubert, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and Doug Wheeler, among others.
Image: Lawrence Carrol, «Untitled Verona», 2001
Masterpieces on paper from the Prast donation
In March 2020, collector Paul Prast donated a group of works on paper to the City of Venice. The collection of 34 works includes drawings, watercolours, tempera paintings, engravings and etchings. The donation is of great interest because it includes artists who are often underrepresented in Italian collections: among the major foreign names are Egon Schiele and Paul Klee, along with other leading figures in European art, including Wassily Kandinsky, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. In addition, further works by great Italian masters such as Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Sironi and Giorgio Morandi have been added to the collections.
Over time, the donation has been the focus of major changes to the presentation of the collections at Ca’ Pesaro and of exhibitions dedicated to the avant-garde (Kandinsky and the Avant-Garde, Candiani Cultural Centre 2022-23, Munch: The Expressionist Revolution, Candiani Cultural Centre 2025-26, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and the Body in Contemporary Art MUVEC 2026-27).
Image: Wassily Kandinsky «Kleine Welten I» (Little Worlds VII), 1922
Contemporary art: the Gemma De Angelis Testa donation
The arrival of Gemma De Angelis Testa’s collection in 2022 has rounded off the Ca’ Pesaro collections, providing the museum with a fundamental core of contemporary artworks. With 105 works by international artists, this donation integrates the City’s heritage with post-war works. The collection includes masterpieces by Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly alongside Arte Povera masters Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Pier Paolo Calzolari.
The investigation of late twentieth-century art is enriched by works by Anselm Kiefer and iconic pieces by Gino De Dominicis and Mario Schifano.
Avant-garde art by women is well represented in the donation, with the visions of Marina Abramović, Vanessa Beecroft, Candida Höfer, Shirin Neshat, among others. The section bears witness to the continuity of the Venetian tradition of patronage, which embraces different techniques, cultures and geographies, all central to contemporary art.
Image: Marina Abramović, «Balkan Baroque», 1997
Twentieth-century Italian art: the Del Fabro donation
Enrico del Fabro’s donation of 77 graphic and pictorial works from the Italian twentieth century dates back to 2024.
These masterpieces have added depth to the civic collections of the City of Venice, especially with Italian artists from the 1920s and 1930s, such as Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Carlo Carrà, Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Gino Severini, Mario Sironi, Ardengo Soffici, and post-war artists such as Virgilio Guidi, Renato Guttuso, and Anton Zoran Mušič.
Image: Cagnaccio di San Pietro, «Nudo femminile»
The second floor of the monumental palace is home to temporary exhibitions and the third floor hosts the Museum of Oriental Art*, included in the Museum itinerary, with a unified ticket.
* In partnership with MINISTERO PER I BENI E LE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Veneziano