Venezuelan artist Sol Calero designs the new illy Art Collection by illycaffè

The collection will be previewed at the international contemporary art fair Frieze New York

TRIESTE, Italy, May 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- illycaffè presents in preview at Frieze New York the new illy Art Collection designed by Sol Calero, a Venezuelan artist born in Caracas and now based in Berlin, renowned for her immersive installations that explore themes of identity and representation through a vibrant mix of patterns and textiles.

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 at once 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 seamlessly with the philosophy of the illy Art Collection, a project through which illycaffè has transformed its iconic cup, designed by Matteo Thun in 1991, into a canvas for over 135 contemporary artists, offering a platform for creative expression and global cultural reflection.

For this new edition, Calero brings her signature style - bold colors, floral motifs, and vibrant geometric patterns - to a collection inspired by Latin American imagery. Her 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 enjoying coffee becomes a moment of discovery and connection.

"Through the 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 deep exploration of identity. With this special edition, art becomes a bridge for global dialogue - uniting diverse cultures through color, storytelling, and shared meaning."

"My work aims to build bridges between people and cultures," says Sol Calero. "Collaborating with illy allowed me to translate my artistic research into accessible objects that can spark curiosity and connection - even from a simple gesture like drinking a coffee."

The illy Art Collection by Sol Calero will premiere at Frieze New York, held from May 7 to 11, 2025 and available starting May 2025 via the illy e-shop, in illy stores (illy Caffè and illy Shop), and through major retailers and e-commerce channels.

Collection details and suggested retail 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 now living in Berlin, Sol Calero is known for creating immersive, site-specific environments that blend painting with vernacular architecture and the cultural codes of Latin America and its diaspora. Her installations - often styled as everyday spaces such as beauty salons, currency exchange counters, salsa schools, travel agencies, or restaurants - explore and critique aesthetic hierarchies and the perception of the exotic, while reflecting on local contexts. Through the use of diverse materials - furniture, textiles, mosaics, murals, video, found and functional objects - Calero crafts works that disarm viewers with convivial, playful atmospheres. Her art invites reflection on migration, displacement, and identity through a vibrant, cross-cultural 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 Good, Goodness, 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 from the illy Art Collection are a tangible expression of this concept. The project of the collection, born in 1992, has 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 hosted the works of more than 125 internationally renowned artists, including Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramović, Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge, Robert Wilson, Ai Weiwei, and others.

illycaffè
illycaffè is an Italian family-owned company, founded in Trieste in 1933 which has always set itself the mission of offering the best coffee to the world. It produces a unique 100% Arabica blend composed of 9 different ingredients. The company selects only 1% of the best Arabica beans. Every day more than 10 million cups of illy coffee are served in over 140 countries around the globe, in the cafés, restaurants and hotels, in single-brand cafés and shops, at home and in the office, in which the company is present through subsidiaries and distributors.

Since its foundation, illycaffè has oriented its strategies towards a sustainable business model, commitment that it strengthened in 2019 by adopting the status of Benefit Company and in 2021 becoming the first Italian coffee company to obtain the international B Corp certification. Everything that is "made in illy" is about beauty and art, the founding principles of the brand, starting from its logo, designed by artist James Rosenquist, up to illy Art Collection cups, decorated by over 135 international artists, or coffee machines designed by internationally renowned designers. With the aim of spreading the culture of quality to growers, baristas and coffee lovers, the company has developed its Università del Caffè which today holds courses in 24 countries around the world. In 2024, the company had a turnover of €630 million. The illy single-brand network has 157 points of sale in 28 countries.

SOURCE illycaffè