July 17, 2025

The most beautiful summer exhibitions in Versilia

From Kan Yasuda's major exhibition to new installations at Villa Bertelli: a guide to the summer's most impressive cultural events

The year 2025 confirms itself as a year full of cultural events between Pietrasanta and Forte dei Marmi. Exhibitions, installations, anniversaries and new openings consolidate the role of this area of Versilia as one of Italy's most vibrant art hubs. Here are the events and exhibitions to mark on your agenda.

Kan Yasuda at Pietrasanta (until September 21)

Kan Yasuda, a Japanese master of international significance, celebrates his 50 years of art in Versilia and the 30th anniversary of his first exhibition in the city with huge sculptures in Pietrasanta's Piazza del Duomo and historic center. Beyond Form is the master's journey, an exhibition project designed ‘tailor-made’ to create a real dialogue between the works and the city's places. Since mid-April, Yasuda's works have also infected the Tonfano Marina: placed one in front of the other to create a dialogue between them and the surrounding landscape, we find two patinated bronze sculptures about 4 meters high weighing more than 2 tons. Marina's installation recalls the white marble Tensei-Tenmoku found in the sculptural park Arte Piazza Bibai, a project initiated in '92 by Yasuda in his hometown on the island of Hokkaido, Japan, where more than 40 large works are on display. A copy of this marble version will also be placed in Piazza Duomo, where Ishinki and Mukayu are already located, one in the small San Martino square, the other in the outdoor area along Via Garibaldi, attached to the collegiate church.

40 years of the Pierluigi Gherardi Sketch Museum in Pietrasanta

Also in June, Pietrasanta celebrates 40 years of the Pierluigi Gherardi Sketch Museum. The new section of the Historical Gypsotheques collects sketches and models typical of traditional artistic work: classical statuary, portraits, furniture and ornamentation, genre sculpture, sacred and funerary art, from the Luisi family and other gipsoteche in Pietrasanta. Repertory plaster casts with which craftsmen made works for a wide range of clients, all over the world, in the period between the 19th and 20th centuries, up to World War II. With more than 450 plaster casts, the Historic Plaster Casts complements the section of 20th-century sketches and models and the Contemporary section, which houses the works of the great masters. The installation Visioni Metafisiche, by visual artist Martin Romeo, takes the form of a large expanded and branched ledwall, which itself becomes a sculptural form, playing with different planes, inclinations and levels of fruition. The project celebrates the essence of the Museum: the video narrative combines the vision of the sketches with the craftsmanship of the area; the works, digitized with 3D scanning, have been reinterpreted in an animated, metaphysical dimension.

Forte più che mai by Elisabetta Rogai at Villa Bertelli (until September 7)

Elisabetta Rogai returns to Versilia with a solo exhibition that is a true tribute to the territory she loves so much. From Aug. 1 to Sept. 7, 2025, on the second floor of the historic Villa Bertelli in Forte dei Marmi, the Florentine artist presents “Forte More Than Ever,” an exhibition that is a genuine gift to those who know how to appreciate art. On display are 25 works spanning 14 years of her career, including: 13 paintings on canvas, including Il tuffo perfetto, a pictorial tribute to the sea of Versilia; 5 paintings on denim, a fabric Rogai has long used as an original pictorial support; and 7 works on white Apuan marble chips, painted with oil and wine, in a marriage of material and territory. The choice of Apuan marble is not accidental: it recalls the long artistic tradition of Versilia, from Michelangelo to the present day, and reaffirms the artist's deep connection with this land between sea and mountains.

Eugenio Cecconi at Forte Leopoldo I in Forte dei Marmi (until November 9)

In Forte dei Marmi, The Forte Leopoldo I, with the Cecconi macchiaiolo exhibition Days of Hunting and Color, confirms itself as a place of memory and knowledge of the richness and topicality of the Macchiaioli experience and the personalities linked to it. The exhibition, which will remain open until November 9, 2025 promoted by the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi, in collaboration with the Villa Bertelli Foundation, features a selection of Cecconi's paintings including portraits of dogs that captivated the public. Telemaco Signorini, who was Eugenio Cecconi's friend and admirer, observed, “there are people in Cecconi's dogs,” adding that “when Cecconi paints a dog he makes a moral portrait of it and makes it clear what he has already done and what he is about to do.”

Stefano Chiassai at Pietrasanta (From October 25, 2025 until February 2026)

From October 25 through February 2026, Pietrasanta will then welcome artist-designer Stefano Chiassai, who is multifaceted in his use of techniques and materials and projected to represent and interpret moments of everyday life. 2025, which will also be the year of the first opening of the Igor Mitoraj Museum, to consolidate and relaunch Pietrasanta's role as a reference in the national and international art scene, a home for the countless declinations of art making that offer citizens and visitors to Versilia and Tuscany to visit 365 days a year and not just in the summer.