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Libraries, museums and bookstores: Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art

Opening Hours

Wednesday to Saturday 11.00 - 18.00
Sunday 12.00 - 17.00

How to get there?

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
39a Canonbury Square
London N1 2AN

The 2 stations closest to the Museum are:

  • Highbury and Islington 
  • Essex Road Station

About the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is a museum in Canonbury Square, London. It is the United Kingdom's only gallery devoted to modern Italian art and is a registered charity under English law. 

It was founded by Eric Estorick, an American sociologist and writer who began seriously collecting works of art after he came to live in England following the Second World War. His wife and his collection took shape between 1953 and 1958 and was displayed in a series of major public exhibitions between 1954 and 1960, both in Britain and abroad, including a show at the Tate Gallery in 1956.

The Tate Gallery requested a long-term loan of key works from the Estoricks’ Italian collection, which lasted from 1966 until 1975, when they withdrew their pictures.

Six months prior to his death (1993), Estorick set up the Eric and Salome Estorick Foundation, to which he donated the couple’s Italian collection. In 1994 the Georgian house at 39a Canonbury Square was purchased to house the works.

The Estorick Collection brings together some of the finest and most important works created by Italian artists during the first half of the twentieth century. It is perhaps best known for its outstanding core of Futurist works. A number of sculptors are also represented in the Collection. 

Exhibitions

Claudio Parmiggiani

28 May 2025 - 31 August 2025

The Estorick Collection presents the first ever institutional UK exhibition dedicated to pioneering contemporary Italian master Claudio Parmiggiani (b. Luzzara, 1943). Featuring selected works from the past 50 years, the exhibition highlights the artist’s distinctive exploration of themes of memory, absence and silence in his “search for an image, object or assemblage that transcends time and individual experience to evoke a universal, existential truth”.

Exhibition Page