Many much-anticipated exhibitions open this month, from David Hockney in Paris, Cartier in London, and Helen Frankenthaler in Bilbao. These are the best global exhibitions to see this April.
As though inspired by David Hockney’s hopeful phrase “do remember, they can’t cancel the spring” – whose work is showing at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this spring and summer, in one of his largest exhibits ever – the art world is packed with lots of joy-filled, exciting things to see and enjoy this April.
Here are the exhibitions to see and know about this month.
Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
“Inclusive and generous, free-ranging and enthusiastic” poet Frank O’Hara writes about Helen Frankenthaler, which eloquently encapsulates the painter’s “without rules” approach to the art. Aptly, Painting Without Rules is the title for Frankenthaler’s exhibition which opens today at Guggenheim Bilbao. Six decades of the artist’s works are hung on the ground floor of northern Spain’s most prestigious art institution, which have to be visited in person to appreciate their scale, which Frankenthaler would paint using the floor rather than an easel. In every painting, you’ll find a clever attention to dimension and reference to movement, ensuring that these Colour Field works of art are never static. Helen Frankenthaler believed that art should “always have another dimension to dream in” the curator, Douglas Dreishpoon, explains. “Ambiguity is key” he adds.
Helen Frankenthaler was an influential figure in the abstract expressionist art movement that gained traction after the second world war thanks to contemporaries like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. Each painter was a source of inspiration for Frankenthaler, and so their works are also woven into this exhibition. While working amongst many influential male artists, Helen Frankenthaler never wanted to be known as a ”woman painter”. Though, while a painter first and foremost, Helen was still acutely aware of her femininity, and unavoidably when you look at her art you see qualities that are undoubtedly feminine, with subtle nods to the emotional and personal.
David Hockney 25, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
“Do remember, they can’t cancel the spring” is a reassuring phrase, one that David Hockney sent to his friends during the pandemic. This hopeful sentiment, as well as Hockney’s continued impact on the communities around him, will carry through this new exhibition in Paris, that is exceptional in scale as well as quality of the art displayed (it is David Hockney after all). Seven decades of work (1955 to 2025), the exhibition takes over an entire building within the fondation and features over 400 of the artist’s works. David Hockney himself commented that “this exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had – 11 rooms in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Some of the most recent paintings I’m working on now will be included in it, and I think it’s going to be very good.” No doubt that this will be the exhibition to visit this summer.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Brazil has a burgeoning contemporary art scene, and MASP is at the heart of it in the buzzy city of São Paulo. Named after the museum’s first artistic director, Pietro Maria Bardi, the gallery has just unveiled a brand new wing, designed to preserve and enhance the history of the institution with five new galleries as well as a conservation laboratory and classrooms. The new wing is inaugurated with a Histories of Ecology theme, which aims to create a new dialogue between past and present via the arts.
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, Photographer's Gallery, London, UK
Established in 1996, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize awards the most innovative international contemporary photographers working at the moment. The 2025 shortlist has just been announced, featuring four finalists (Cristina de Middel, Rahim Fortune, Tarrah Krajnak, Lindokuhle Sobekwa) who work across documentary photography, styled images, self-portraiture, performance, archives, and more. A selection of works by each photographer will be on display, including Cristina de Middel’s presentation of the Central American migration route across Mexico; Rahim Fortune’s archival examination of the relationship between photographer and his local communities in Southern America; Peruvian-American Tarrah Krajnak’s self-portraits; and South African Lindokhule Sobekwa’s family projects.
Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style, Design Museum, London, UK
Thanks to Pamela Anderson, the words “Baywatch” and “red swimsuit” have practically become synonymous. And you can now see this infamous piece of swimwear on display at the Design Museum. Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style is heroing a whole history of swimwear as curated by guest curator Amber Butchart: the evolution of style, materials, body image, its role in pop culture, Britain’s boom in lido culture… From Tom Daley’s speedos worn during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (yes, really) to fashion’s viral mermaid core that has rippled through social media over the past few years, you’re in for an aquatic treat with this exhibition.
Polaroids, Helmet Newton Foundation, Berlin, Germany
As part of EMOP (European Month of Photography) in Berlin, the Helmut Newton Foundation has opened a new group exhibition, Polaroids, spotlighting the very best by Helmut Newton as well as an impressive 60 of his contemporaries working with the same formats. Once a pioneering method of photography, something special still remains about polaroids, perhaps because only one version of each polaroid exists, another exactly the same can’t be printed. The polaroids on display have been curated from the Polaroid company’s collection of over 4,400 works by 800 photographers for their captivating use of the format.
Inner Child, Opera Gallery, London, UK
Flit through the luxe streets of Mayfair to find Opera Gallery, just off the borough’s main throws of Bond Street. This spring, the gallery will host two celebrated names in the contemporary art world: Niki de Saint Phalle and Yayoi Kusama who through vibrant colours and abstract forms will display unusual images of the female form. Centred around our “inner child” both artists explore their own complicated childhoods and a journey towards healing via both hallucinations and happiness. Exhibition highlights include Niki de Saint Phalle’s 1968 wall installation made up of 18 sculptures titled Last Night I Had a Dream as well as Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets series.
Cartier, V&A London, UK
At this point, ‘Cartier’ has practically become synonymous with the word ‘jewellery’ and all things that glitter. Starting from the turn of the 20th century up until the present, the V&A’s new exhibition, simply titled Cartier, traces the heritage of this prestigious brand, from its humble beginnings in 1847 when Louis-François Cartier took over the workshop of Adolphe Picard in Paris to the distinguished brand it is today. Over 350 carefully selected pieces will be on display, divided into three main sections that move between design, craftsmanship, materials, as well as the brand’s signature emblems and references.
Still Showing in London
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur, The Wallace Collection, London, UK
The largest contemporary exhibition to ever hit The Wallace Collection is now open, with Grayson Perry’s outlandish commentary of British fashion and culture at the heart of it. Titled Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur, 40 new works from ceramics, tapestries and more, come together to poke at both art and fashion’s incessant search for perfectionism via unusual “outsider art”. Work by Swiss psychiatric artist Aloïse Corbaz and British multimedia artist (ink, tapestry, paint) Madge Gill will also be shown. As a sharp nod to the future, the newer pieces also start to question who an artist is, in our increasingly tech-focussed world.
Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350, The National Gallery, London, UK
While dubbed the Dark Ages elsewhere, the Medieval period in Siena brought a golden age to art (both metaphorically as well as through all the magnificent gold paint and leaf work) as Italian painters forged a new path for art – one that is still some of the most critiqued and visited work today. Rich and decorative, Sienese artists captured religious tableaux as well as immortalised many intimate moments that characterised ways of life and beliefs of this bygone era. Duccio, Simone Martini, as well as brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti – all the big names from this period are on display at The National Gallery, with works reunited after spending centuries split into pieces and displayed in varying cities across Europe.
Arpita Singh: Remembering, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
Arpita Singh is a leading contemporary artist, whose work emerges from India‘s post-independence era of the mid-twentieth century. Born in West Bengal before relocating to New Delhi, Singh’s signature figurative style offers lots of colour and often presents themes of expedition and journeys, both visually as well as emotionally. Singh creatively merges Indian Court painting – a prominent style in Indian art from the 16th to 19th century depicting the grandeur of royal tradition – with surrealist and modernist tropes emerging beyond European artwork across the 1900s. Many of the subjects of the artist’s work are women, presenting tales of femininity in its many forms amongst a turbulent social backdrop, with each piece offering more than can be summarised in a single idea. “I, the woman, stand there as anybody, as everybody” Arpita Singh explains. Remembering is Arpita Singh’s first solo exhibition in London, and spotlights pieces that demonstrate her experimentation with different painting techniques from acrylic reverse painting to oils on canvas, spanning Signh’s six decade career, beginning in the 1960s, as selected by the artist.
Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Hayward Gallery, London, UK
Despite a fifty-year long career and a creative contribution to feminist art, Hayward Gallery’s Danger Came Smiling marks the first London retrospective of the artist Linder. Widely recognised for her photomontage work spanning a variety of materials and subject matters such as textiles, film, perfume, music, fashion and more, Linder’s work offers a rich tapestry of underground art movements and changing feminist ideas across time and culture. “The found images in my work are often quite fragile both materially and conceptually, it doesn’t take much then to hijack them and to take them somewhere far more surreal,” Linder explains. Danger Came Smiling starts in the creative turbulence of the 1970s punk scene in Manchester, a time that Linder was directly immersed in as part of the punk band Ludus. Her work began with her designing the collaged album covers for both Ludus and other contemporary musicians; covers that are still widely recognised as leading images of the British punk scene. The exhibition continues to cover Linder’s challenging of gender stereotypes and aesthetic convention, carefully done through both humour and poetry across her career. Talking about her debut London exhibition, Linder enthuses that the Hayward Gallery’s “Brutalist architecture is the perfect foil for the delicacy of the print ephemera I’ve worked with for over half a century”.
Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, Hayward Gallery, London, UK
The collage and photomontage theme continues at Hayward Gallery. Following a successful run at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles – co-organised by Hayward Gallery and marking Mickalene Thomas’ first international tour – Mickalene Thomas’ powerful portraits return to the UK capital. With a title taken from canonical feminist author bell hooks, All About Love by artist Mickalene Thomas is a visual examination of motherhood, pop culture, mass media, the politics of power, sexuality, and the complexities of femininity that bell’s essay collection also questions. Thomas comments that “my gaze is the gaze of a Black woman unapologetically loving other Black women.” Love appears in all its forms here; romantic, familial, self-love, even the type of ‘love’ that you can feel for people you have never met. The exhibition collates many different artistic forms including photographs, collages, figurative paintings – often mimicking the poses and compositions of 19th-century French paintings, but reconfigured to re-evaluate the painter-subject power dynamic.
Flowers - Flora In Contemporary Art & Culture, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
Gestures of romance, markers of the seasons and muses for art – dating from antiquity to the contemporary – flowers have always played an important, but varying, role in culture. Saatchi Gallery is tributing an entire exhibition to the role of flora in contemporary creative work, spanning fashion, photography, body painting, archival objects, sketches, paintings, and more. The gallery has acquired over 500 works to pull the exhibition together: six hyperrealist floral brooches by Buccellati, including the bejewelled 1929 Orchid; images by Nick Knight; tattoo work by Daniel The Gardener; and designs by Finnish lifestyle brand Marimekko, plus British designers Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood. A highlight of the exhibition is the installation of 100,000 dried flowers by artist Rebecca Louise Law that takes over an entire room for a very photographic moment, proving the mystical allure flowers continue to have today.
The Face Magazine: Culture Shift, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK
The self-defined “world’s best dressed magazine” is proving its status as a ground-breaking publication, one that set the threshold for creativity in pop culture and spotlighted emerging talent across the eighties, nineties, naughties, (still continuing today) in Britain with Culture Shift at the National Portrait Gallery. This exhibition has been at the forefront of fashion enthusiasts’ ‘to-visit’ exhibitions, and it finally opened in February 2025. Since the first issue of the magazine hit shelves in May 1980, The Face magazine has photographed – and dressed – a cultural undercurrent of artists from Madonna to Kate Moss, and, for many, helped establish their success and status in the pop industry. Over 200 prints by more than 80 photographers including David LaChapelle, Juergen Teller and Corinne Day will illustrate The Face’s sartorial legacy and lasting creative impact on British (and global) culture.
From The Roster, Hamiltons Gallery, London, UK
Small but mighty, this independent gallery in London has represented and exhibited some of the biggest names in photography and art across the world. From the Roster features a few of the artists who have previously graced the gallery walls, including Steven Meisel, Irving Penn, Herb Ritts and Guido Mocafico, among many others. The works in the exhibition are tied together with an overarching theme of the extra-ordinary, whether through exaggerated forms, superlative depictions of beauty, or unique landscapes and imagery. Despite the theme, the photographs and artworks throughout the exhibition have been produced across different times and settings, to display the ever-evolving tastes in art.
Brasil! Brasil! The Birth Of Modernism, Royal Academy, London, UK
Characterised by a turn away from convention in the search for the new, modernism has always felt a nebulous term in the art world. Across Europe, modernism spread like wildfire at the turn of the 20th century thanks to ground-breaking work by the likes of French artist Louise Bourgeois, British writer Virginia Woolf, and Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzalez (among many, many others). Yet, at the same time, modernism was picking up the pace across Brazil. Now a century on from its beginnings, The Royal Academy in London is exhibiting 130 works by ten core Brazilian artists which each creatively question Indigenous identity and the Afro-Brazilian experience from the 1910s to the 1970s. This influential lineup includes Tarsila do Amaral, who is now considered a leading female figure of the nation’s modernist movement, and will span performance artists, painters, and more.
The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, London, UK
Britain’s years under Thatcher rule in the 1980s were known to be turbulent. And this exhibition forms a body of photographs that documents the social and cultural impact of the shifting political legislation. From the miners’ strikes to gentrification and the AIDS pandemic, protest defined the voice of the British public facing this strife. The 80s: Photographing Britain highlights how photography gave voice to social change led by the people, and consequently became a tool for loudening marginalised voices.
Still Showing in Europe
Chromotherapia: Feel-Good Colour Photography, Villa Medici, Rome, Italy
It wasn’t until the 1960s that colour photography became a common visual narrative. In contrast to black and white photography which upheld a serious tone – either through fine art or serious subject matter – colour photography became a way to simply have fun and experiment with tones and contrasts that is lost in sepia-toned imagery. Villa Medici is spotlighting the “zestful gaze” and unpretentious qualities of colour photography via 19 artists work, from Martin Parr and Guy Bourdin to Yevonde Middleton. The kitsch, the surrealist, the pop art, the satirical – it’s all here. Looks like we’ve found that much-needed serotonin boost to kick us into spring.
Azzedine Alaïa, Thierry Mugler: 1980-1990 Two Decades of Artistic Affinities, Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, Paris, France
La Fondation Azzedine Alaïa in Paris is hosting a sartorial conversation between two of the greatest designers to have graced the fashion industry: Azzedine Alaïa and Thierry Mugler. 1980-1990 Two Decades of Artistic Affinities delves into the enigmatic relationship between the two designers, both via and beyond fashion. The two first collaborated together for Mugler’s autumn/ winter 1979-80 collection when Alaïa designed a series of tuxedos for the show. Mugler quickly became a guiding force for Alaïa, helping him establish a name within the torpedic industry. “Alaïa and Mugler freely let their influences influence each other’s creations. In the 1980s, both divinised the woman, proclaiming the return of glamour in glory and Hollywood as their inspiration, a world away from the folkloric fashions of the 1970s,” the gallery explains, and it’s this that forms the heart of the exhibition – blossoming hip silhouettes, cinched waists and all, as curated by one of the industry’s best curators, Olivier Saillard.
A New Opening: Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins, Lisbon, Portugal
Lisbon is no stranger to creative spots and new art concepts, and the new, March-2025 opened, Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins (MACAM) is just that. Once the Palácio Condes de Ribeira Grande, the historic site now houses both the contemporary art gallery as well as a five-star art hotel set across 64 uniquely designed rooms, marking the first of this style of property in Europe. Over 600 artworks spotlighting both Portuguese and international artists dating from the 19th century to contemporary work will decorate the museum wings, including tiles by Portuguese ceramist Maria Ana Vasco Costa and art by Marina Abramović – and more.
Sam Youkilis: Under The Sun, CO/ Berlin, Germany
Content creator, photojournalist, photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist: Sam Youkilis has changed the way we film, digest, and interact with the mundanity and spontaneity of real life via Instagram. Poetic and striking, Youkilis has helped to rewrite the visual language we converse through online, by posting short, unedited video clips of fleeting moments around the world and garnering over 700,000 followers. These flaneur-style vignettes effortlessly capture the beauty in the everyday, from street sellers wheeling fresh fruit through Hanoi to affectionate lovers in the backstreets of Naples. As a rare opportunity, snapshots of Sam Youkilis’ work are on display to admire off-screen in Berlin this year.
George Hoyningen-Huene, Glamour e Avanguardia, Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy
A fashion photographer and prominent member of the Surrealist circle, rubbing shoulders and exchanging conversation with the likes of Salvador Dali, Lee Miller, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau, George Hoyningen-Huene’s visually striking black-and-white photography documented a pivotal era for the arts and fashion world. At Palazzo Reale in Milan this year, over 100 platinum prints are on display, taken for the likes of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, with subjects ranging from dancer Olga Spessivtzeva and Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes.
Anselm Kiefer: Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind, Stedelijk & Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
For the first time ever, the Van Gogh Museum and Stedelijk Museum – both in Amsterdam – are coming together to curate and display an extensive exhibition on the life and work of German painter Anselm Kiefer, presented as a two-part exhibition spread across both venues. Inspired by German Romanticism as well as poetry and the works of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, Kiefer’s work often foregrounds abstraction – but rationally structured – with layers of the mythic, normally painted across large-scale canvases. This is an unprecedented kind of exhibition that you’re sure to want to bookmark if you find yourself in the Dutch capital this year.
Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
We all know her name, and for good reason. British artist Dame Tracey Emin has helped define contemporary British art across her impressive career, with autobiographical and confessional works. The beautiful Palazzo in the heart of Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, is hosting a major exhibition dedicated to the award-winning contemporary British artist. The exhibition sees Emin’s autobiographical and confessionary work – including painting, sketches, sculptor, video, installations, photography and more – hung across the beautiful space, from the courtyard to gallery spaces. This is a therapeutic – and visually striking – chance to immerse yourself in the vulnerable and physical work of Tracey Emin, amongst a beautiful setting.
Lead image: 1960_HelenWithAlassio
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