Irene Cattaneo is a German-Italian artist (b. 1989) whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, functional pieces, wearable art, set design, and large scale installations.

After relocating to Venice in 2021 to work with local artisans, she developed the Clouds and Coulds series, a foundation for her current sculptural explorations. Her work is defined by crisp silhouettes, graphic concision, and the transformation of iconic symbols into functional objects, with a strong focus on glass, bronze, and stone.

The phenomenology of glassmaking underpins her visual language, while literature, personal memory, and wordplay serve as conceptual threads. Since her solo debut Yūgen during Venice Glass Week (2021), Cattaneo has exhibited widely in Italy and internationally.

In 2024, she unveiled the site-specific Carpe(t) Diem at La Samaritaine / LVMH (Paris), followed by Just My Cup of Tea(r)s at Homo Faber (Venice), and Meteomorphosis at Lo Studio Nadja Romain during the Venice Art Biennale. Her work has featured in multiple editions of Glasstress, alongside Ai Weiwei, Tony Cragg, and Erwin Wurm, most recently at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. She joined Meritalia editions with Gaetano Pesce and Misha Kahn, and her sculptures are included in the Dragon Hill Sculpture Park, designed by Jacques Coüelle, among artists like Antony Gormley and Gisela Colón.

In the U.S., her work gained recognition with a group show and auction at Dallas Contemporary, followed by her solo New York debut, Through the Looking Glass, an immersive installation in Ashlee Harrison’s Upper East Side salon. In 2025 she was selected to participate in Murano Illumina il Mondo, a project organised by Venice Glass Week and the City of Venice, where she exhibited her chandelier, The Observatory in the picturesque Piazza San Marco.

The same year in October, during Art Basel Paris, opened at Galerie Gastou her solo exhibition based on Charles Baudelaire prose poems Les Bienfaits de la Lune. Irene’s most recent project, titled The Secret Garden opening in simultaneity with the 61th Venice Biennale, is an in-situ exhibition set within one of Venice’s private gardens.