Maurizio Cattelan, 2026 © Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz / Ivan Erofeev
Maurizio Cattelan will present his first major solo exhibition in Germany this autumn, taking over Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie with a landmark exhibition that brings together some of his most celebrated works alongside new commissions created specifically for Mies van der Rohe’s iconic building.
Opening during Berlin Art Week on 10th September 2026, NIGHT marks a new chapter for the Preis der Nationalgalerie, with Cattelan selected by an international jury to create an ambitious museum-wide presentation. The exhibition brings together historic works with newly commissioned installations that respond directly to the architecture and history of the Neue Nationalgalerie.
Over the past three decades, Cattelan has become one of contemporary art’s most influential and provocative figures, using irony, humour and disarming simplicity to question authority, religion, identity and collective memory. Rather than offering straightforward narratives, his sculptures and installations invite viewers to reconsider familiar images and symbols from unexpected perspectives.
The exhibition features a number of Cattelan’s most iconic works, including Him (2001), Novecento (1997), La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi (2000) and Untitled (2003), inspired by Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum. Together with newly commissioned works, they explore recurring themes throughout the artist’s practice, including innocence and violence, personal identity and the lingering presence of historical memory.
Maurizio Cattelan, Him, 2001. Photo: Attilio Maranzano
At the heart of NIGHT is a new site-specific commission conceived for the museum’s celebrated glass pavilion. Rather than simply installing artworks within the galleries, Cattelan has reimagined how visitors move through and experience the building, transforming the relationship between artwork, architecture and audience.
Presented in Berlin, the exhibition also reflects on Germany’s layered history and evolving culture of remembrance. By placing his works within this context, Cattelan invites fresh conversations around memory, symbolism and the ways images continue to shape contemporary society.
Curated by Lisa Botti in collaboration with Klaus Biesenbach and the artist, the exhibition has been developed through an extended dialogue with Cattelan, including multiple visits to Berlin and detailed research into the museum and its historical context. According to Botti, the title NIGHT suggests “a condition in which things are not necessarily hidden, but seen differently”, where familiar forms become strange and overlooked details come into focus.
Maurizio Cattelan, First, 2025 © Maurizio Cattelan
The exhibition also inaugurates a new format for the Preis der Nationalgalerie, which, after 25 years of recognising outstanding contemporary artists, now offers a single artist the opportunity to realise a major exhibition within one of Europe’s most significant museum spaces.
Maurizio Cattelan: NIGHT, 10th September 2026 – 7th March 2027, Neue Nationalgalerie
About the artist
Maurizio Cattelan is one of the most provocative and influential artists of the contemporary era, renowned for sculptures and installations that combine satire, humour and conceptual rigour to challenge the conventions of the art world and contemporary society. Working across sculpture, installation and performance, Cattelan uses irony and absurdity to address themes of power, politics, religion, celebrity and mortality. His works often provoke controversy while inviting viewers to question authority, cultural values and the role of art itself.
Born in Padua, Italy, in 1960, Cattelan is largely self-taught and emerged in the 1990s with works that rejected traditional expectations of artistic practice. Throughout his career he has become known for creating instantly recognisable artworks that blur the boundaries between comedy and critique, including hyperreal sculptures, irreverent interventions and conceptual gestures that have become defining images of contemporary art. Whether depicting historical figures, everyday objects or symbolic animals, Cattelan transforms familiar subjects into works that are both humorous and unsettling.
Cattelan has exhibited at leading museums and biennials around the world, including major retrospectives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and significant presentations at the Venice Biennale. Through his fearless use of wit, spectacle and subversion, Maurizio Cattelan has continually challenged expectations of what contemporary art can be, creating works that remain among the most discussed and culturally significant of the past three decades.
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Mark Westall has spent over thirty years creating platforms for culture. Since founding FAD Magazine in 2006, he’s dedicated his career to documenting, championing and questioning contemporary art through publishing, criticism and conversation. As founder and editorial director of one of the UK’s leading independent contemporary art publications, he has interviewed artists, reviewed exhibitions and covered the ideas shaping contemporary visual culture for more than two decades. He also founded Art of Conversation, Despoke and FAD Bazaar, and regularly serves as a judge for international art and photography awards.