Art fair · 11 — 13 December 2026
Masha Baur at ART Expo Trieste
Magazzino 42, Stazione Marittima · Molo dei Bersaglieri 3, Trieste, Italy
Three December days at the water’s edge of the old Habsburg port. Masha Baur brings her works on paper to ART Expo Trieste, in a harbour warehouse on the pier — while the city behind it is dressed for Advent, its great sea-facing square strung with lights.
The fair
ART Expo Trieste returns for its second edition: a three-day contemporary art fair gathering artists from more than twenty countries, alongside a festival programme of talks, music and live work. Baur shows drawings from her 2025–26 body of work — large sheets in a single grade of pencil and a restricted palette of oil sticks, where the figure recedes into a non-linear timeline and tulips keep falling.
The artist
Masha Baur (b. 1984, Rostov-on-Don) is a German artist whose works on paper navigate the liminal space between memory and the subconscious. Her language is shaped by the emotive rawness of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon alongside the gestural freedom of Cy Twombly. Following her selection for the Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition (London, 2019), she spent several years redefining her practice; the current series marks its most profound evolution.
The venue
The fair fills Magazzino 42, a harbour warehouse on the Molo dei Bersaglieri — the pier of Trieste’s Stazione Marittima — with two halls and a panoramic terrace over the Gulf. It stands on the water a few minutes on foot from Piazza Unità d’Italia.
- Magazzino 42, Stazione Marittima — Molo dei Bersaglieri 3, 34123 Trieste
- ART Expo Trieste — programme and applications on the fair’s official page
- Follow the fair — @artexpo_trieste
- Directions — the Stazione Marittima on Google Maps
- Opening hours and tickets are announced by the fair closer to December
Around the fair
Trieste is the Habsburg empire’s old seaport — a Mitteleuropean city of grand squares, literary cafés and the best coffee in Italy, at its most atmospheric in December: lights up, Christmas markets open, sunset over the Gulf by half past four. Bring a windproof coat; when the Bora blows down from the Karst, you will know.
The city
- Piazza Unità d’Italia — Europe’s great sea-facing square — is a short walk along the waterfront from the fair.
- The Canal Grande cuts into the Borgo Teresiano; James Joyce, who wrote Dubliners here, stands in bronze on the Ponterosso bridge.
- San Giusto hill — cathedral, castle and the Roman theatre at its foot — is fifteen minutes up from the square.
- In December the stalls of the Fiera di San Nicolò and the Christmas market run through the centre into January.
The cafés
- Trieste drinks more coffee than anywhere in Italy and orders it in its own language: a nero is an espresso, a capo in b a macchiato in glass.
- The literary cafés survive — Caffè San Marco (1914), Caffè degli Specchi on the square, Caffè Tommaseo since 1830.
- For lunch, a buffet: Buffet da Pepi has served boiled pork with horseradish since 1897. Jota — bean and sauerkraut soup — is winter itself. Carso wines, Vitovska and Terrano, close the evening.
An hour away
- Miramare — Maximilian of Habsburg’s white castle on the sea — is twenty minutes by bus or nine by train; the park is open through winter.
- The Karst plateau rises directly behind the city — osmize, dry-stone villages and the edge of the Slovenian world.
- Ljubljana is around ninety minutes away — two countries in one December trip.
Getting there
- Trieste Airport (TRS) is around 30 km out — bus 51 or train reaches the centre in about 50 minutes.
- Direct trains run from Venice in about two hours; Vienna is a five-hour drive through the Alps.
- The fair’s pier is a short waterfront walk from the centre, past the Molo Audace.
Be there
Availability and prices of the works are on request — every enquiry reaches the studio directly. For occasional letters from the studio, including news of the fair, join the mailing list below.
Keep me informed
Occasional notes on new works and exhibitions — no more than a few times a year.
City photography via Wikimedia Commons: Piazza Unità in Advent — Andrek02, CC0 · Molo Audace — mornarsamotarsky, CC BY 2.0 · Piazza Unità at dusk — Meri Valenti (TCI), CC BY 4.0 · Caffè San Marco — Fred Romero, CC BY 2.0 · Miramare — Conny Duck, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Canal Grande — Silverije, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Stazione Marittima — Fred Romero, CC BY 2.0.