XIV Steps

Opens Tuesday, May 5 Portuguese Artist Pedro Cabrita Reis, on the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, returns to Venice at Magazzino del Sale 3 - Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia with a radically different gesture: XIV Steps, a cycle of fourteen paintings inspired by the Stations of the Cross. Pedro Cabrita Reis, a painter at heart, marks, with XIV Steps, a significant new chapter in his practice and ongoing investigation into culture, memory, and the complexities of the human condition. Born in 1956 in Lisbon, where he lives and works, Cabrita Reis is widely regarded as one of the leading figures of contemporary art. Since the mid-1980s, his work has achieved international recognition and has been pivotal to the redefinition of sculpture in a post-minimal and post-conceptual context. Cabrita Reis has consistently pursued an independent path, developing a multidisciplinary practice that encompasses painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, and large-scale installations composed of industrial and found materials. The theoretical and formal richness of Cabrita Reis’ work unfolds through an anthropological reflection that resists sociological reductionism. Meaning emerges through silence, fragmentation, and attentive inquiry rather than through explicit narrative or ideological assertion. Central to his practice is an uncompromising belief in artistic freedom. This is the case of XIV Steps, the latest Venetian exhibition by Pedro Cabrita Reis; the 14 diptych paintings that Cabrita Reis created especially for Venice in 2026. Here the Artist engages with the dramatic narrative structure of the Stations of the Cross, a theme whose resonance extends far beyond its theological origins. As famously observed by Barnett Newman, the Stations articulate a universal reflection on suffering, endurance, and the human condition, dimensions that find renewed expression in this cycle of paintings.