With the major solo exhibition Michael Armitage. The Promise of Change at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, one of the most internationally distinguished painters of our time once again moves into the focus of the global art public. Presented by the Pinault Collection, the exhibition is on view until 10 January 2027 and brings together an extensive body of work comprising large-format paintings and numerous studies. It reveals an artistic œuvre that has, for years, mediated between East African contemporaneity, European art history, myth, political chronicle, and an existential poetics of the image.

Michael Armitage was awarded the Ruth Baumgarte Foundation Art Prize in 2020. The jury honoured an artist who, in colour-intensive and often large-format oil paintings, combines elements of Western European art history with African visual traditions, developing from them an unmistakable painterly language. Today, the prescience of that decision has become evident: Armitage is now among the defining voices of a contemporary painting that does not separate aesthetic force from social analysis.

The exhibition in Venice addresses central themes of our present: political instability, abuse of power, social exclusion, migration, memory, and identity. Michael Armitage’s The Promise of Change is a significant exhibition in the context of the 61st International Art Exhibition — the Venice Biennale.