Galleria Raffaella Cortese Gallery in Milan
Venezia · Contemporary programme
Editorial Profile
Founded in 1995 with a solo exhibition dedicated to conceptual photographer Franco Vimercati, Galleria Raffaella Cortese has established itself as one of the most distinctive and principled commercial galleries within contemporary art in Milan. Operating across four interconnected spaces on Via A. Stradella in the Venezia district — each with its own architectural character rooted in Milanese design rather than the neutral logic of the white cube — the gallery represents a transgenerational roster of approximately thirty international artists working across photography, installation, video, and performance. A defining thread throughout its program has been the sustained commitment to women artists: among the first galleries in Milan to introduce pioneering American women artists to the Italian scene in the 1990s, Raffaella Cortese has consistently foregrounded practices that engage with feminism, bodily politics, language, and questions of identity across cultural geographies.
The curatorial direction favors depth over volume, building long-term relationships with artists whose work addresses critical and often politically resonant themes. The program includes figures such as Joan Jonas, Kiki Smith, Roni Horn, Zoe Leonard, Monica Bonvicini, and Anna Maria Maiolino, alongside Italian artists including Francesco Arena and Marcello Maloberti. The gallery participates regularly in Art Basel — both in Basel and Paris — as well as Artissima and Miart, reflecting a confident international positioning. Since 2022, a satellite space in Albisola Superiore on the Ligurian coast extends the program with site-specific commissions and a more contemplative pace. An in-house library open to researchers and students further underscores the gallery's commitment to knowledge production and critical engagement beyond the commercial dimension.
Selected Artists
Joan Jonas
American
A pioneering figure in performance and video art whose practice weaves together drawing, movement, sound, and mythology to explore memory, the body, and the relationship between image and narrative.
Monica Bonvicini
Italian
An artist whose work interrogates power, architecture, and gender through text-based neon, mirrored surfaces, and large-scale installations that engage directly with institutional and built environments.
Zoe Leonard
American
Working primarily with analog photography and large-scale installation, Leonard examines borders, landscape, labor, and the politics of looking through methodical, durational approaches to image-making.
Anna Maria Maiolino
Italian, Brazilian
A multidisciplinary artist born in Italy and based in Brazil whose practice spans drawing, film, and sculptural installation, frequently engaging with bodily matter, language, and processes of making as political and existential acts.
Miroslaw Balka
Polish
A sculptor and installation artist whose work draws on personal and collective memory, often employing industrial or humble materials — steel, salt, soap — to address themes of mortality, history, and human vulnerability.
Kimsooja
Korean
An artist whose practice centers on the bottari — traditional Korean wrapped cloth bundles — alongside immersive light and video installations that address displacement, identity, and meditative states of stillness.
Martha Rosler
American
A foundational figure in feminist and politically engaged art, Rosler works across photomontage, video, and installation to critique consumer culture, domestic ideology, media representation, and the conditions of everyday life.
Selected Exhibitions
Bearing
Gabrielle Goliath
A solo presentation by the South African artist whose practice uses multi-channel video and sound installation to address grief, testimony, and the politics of witnessing across personal and collective registers.
Empty Rooms II
Joan Jonas
A solo exhibition presenting a new multimedia installation combining single-channel video, ink drawings on handmade paper, and light sculptures, continuing Jonas's long-standing investigation into myth, memory, and the natural world.
Utopia Now!
Yael Bartana
A solo exhibition featuring video installation and neon works exploring collective memory, national identity, and utopian political imagination, presented shortly after Bartana's participation in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Elegy
Gabrielle Goliath
A solo presentation centered on Goliath's ongoing video and sound installation series bearing witness to gender-based violence, presented across the gallery's three Milan spaces with an immersive, durational format.
Excerpts from Al río / To the River
Zoe Leonard
A solo exhibition drawn from Leonard's large-scale photographic project documenting the Rio Grande border landscape, examining displacement, ecology, and the politics of territorial boundaries through analogue photography.
Ações Matéricas
Anna Maria Maiolino
A focused solo presentation of Maiolino's sculptural and painterly works exploring matter, gesture, and the body, highlighting her sustained engagement with materiality as both a physical and existential practice.
Pleasant
Monica Bonvicini
A major solo exhibition occupying all four of the gallery's Milan spaces, featuring mirrored surfaces, neon, and structural interventions that interrogate power, desire, and the built environment through the artist's signature material language.
An American in the 21st Century
Martha Rosler
A solo exhibition bringing together photomontage and text-based installation works by the American feminist artist, addressing media representation, domestic ideology, and the political conditions of contemporary American life.
Explore Milan
Three ways of reading the contemporary art landscape of Milan.
