Venezuelan artist at Frieze New York

Venezuelan artist Sol Calero creates illycaffè’s new illy Art Collection
Trieste, May 7, 2025 – At Frieze New York, illycaffè presents the new illy Art Collection by Sol Calero, a Venezuelan artist born in Caracas and now based in Berlin, known for her immersive installations that explore themes of identity and representation through a vibrant mix of patterns and fabrics.

Calero’s distinctive aesthetic blends painting, vernacular architecture, and diverse materials—including fabrics, furniture, and mosaics—to create colorful, participatory, and site-specific environments. Her works, often set in spaces that evoke everyday activities, such as beauty salons, salsa schools, restaurants, or travel agencies, challenge aesthetic and cultural hierarchies and the perception of the exotic. With a style that is both playful and ironic, she addresses issues of identity, migration, and displacement.

In Calero’s hands, everyday objects become storytelling tools that convey personal and collective narratives, evoke cultural identities, and foster dialogue between places and people. This vision aligns perfectly with the philosophy of the illy Art Collection, a project through which illycaffè transformed its iconic cup, designed by Matteo Thun in 1991, into a canvas for more than 135 contemporary artists, offering a platform for creative expression and global cultural reflection.

For this new edition, Calero brings his signature style – bold colors, floral motifs, and vibrant geometric patterns – to a collection inspired by Latin American imagery. His designs encourage us to slow down, observe, and connect. Each cup becomes a miniature visual universe, where art merges with the domestic sphere and the act of drinking coffee becomes a moment of discovery and connection. “Through illy Art Collections, we celebrate the power of art to elevate everyday life,” says Cristina Scocchia, CEO of illycaffè. “Sol Calero brings the richness and complexity of Latin American cultural codes into our daily routines, blending irony, beauty and a profound exploration of identity. With this special edition, art becomes a bridge for global dialogue – uniting diverse cultures through colors, narratives and shared meanings.”

“My work aims to build bridges between people and cultures,” says Sol Calero. “The collaboration with illy has allowed me to translate my artistic research into accessible objects that can spark curiosity and connection – even with a simple gesture like drinking a coffee.” The illy Art Collection by Sol Calero will launch at Frieze New York, which runs from May 7-11, 2025, and will be available from May 2025 on the illy webstore, illy stores (illy Caffè and illy Shop), and at major retailers and e-commerce channels.

Collection details and suggested prices:

– Set of 4 espresso cups – €94.00

– Set of 4 cappuccino cups – €114.00

– Set of 2 espresso cups – €51.00

– Set of 2 cappuccino cups – €61.00

Sol Calero
Born in Caracas and currently based in Berlin, Sol Calero is known for creating immersive and specific environments that combine painting with vernacular architecture and the cultural codes of Latin America and its diaspora. Her installations, often conceived in everyday spaces such as beauty salons, currency exchanges, salsa schools, travel agencies or restaurants, explore and critique aesthetic hierarchies and the perception of the exotic, while also reflecting on local contexts. Using a variety of materials – furniture, textiles, mosaics, murals, videos, found and functional objects – Calero creates works that disarm viewers with playful and convivial atmospheres. Her art invites reflection on migration, displacement and identity through a vibrant and transcultural visual language. At the 2024 Venice Art Biennale, she created a site-specific open-air pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale, showcasing her distinctive language and sensibility.

illy Art Collection
For illycaffè, whose distinctive values are Goodness, Kindness and Beauty, contemporary art enriches taste with beauty. The beauty that illycaffè aims to achieve is inspired by the Greek concept of kalokagathìa, which combines kalòs (what is beautiful) with agathòs (what is good) to create a new meaning in which beauty and goodness merge into one, where one depends on the other. The cups of the illy Art Collection are a tangible expression of this concept. The collection project, born in 1992, allowed illycaffè to transform an everyday object – the coffee cup designed by Matteo Thun for illy – into a blank canvas on which contemporary artists were invited to express their creativity. Over the years, this “canvas” has housed the works of more than 125 internationally renowned artists, including Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramović, Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge, Robert Wilson, Ai Weiwei, among others.
illycaffè
illycaffè is an Italian family business, founded in Trieste in 1933, whose mission has always been to offer the best coffee to the world. It produces an exclusive blend of 100% Arabica coffee, composed of 9 of the best Arabica selections in the world, with a constant eye for innovation. The company selects only 1% of the best Arabica coffee beans. Every day, more than 10 million cups of illy coffee are served in cafés, restaurants and hotels, in its own stores, at home and in the office, in more than 140 countries around the world, where the company is present through subsidiaries and distributors. Since its foundation, illycaffè has oriented its strategies towards a sustainable business model, a commitment that it reinforced in 2019 by adopting the status of Benefit Company and in 2021 by becoming the first Italian coffee company to obtain international B Corp certification. Everything that is “made in illy” is about beauty and art, the brand’s fundamental principles, from its logo, designed by artist James Rosenquist, to the illy Art Collection cups decorated by more than 135 international artists, or coffee machines designed by internationally renowned designers. With the aim of spreading the culture of quality among producers, baristas and coffee lovers, the company developed its Università del Caffè, which today organizes courses in 24 countries around the world. In 2024, the company recorded a turnover of 630 million euros. The illy single-brand network has 157 points of sale in 28 countries.
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