Contemporary Art Collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Marks Her Foundation’s 30th Anniversary, Stages First Exhibition in the U.S.
The energy Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo emanates is quite unique — and contagious. When she starts describing the plans to mark the 30th anniversary of the foundation that bears her name, one feels like there’s no time to waste — as if it were really urgent to join her on the whirlwind tour of exhibitions earmarked for the year. There is absolutely no sense of academic snobbery or being patronizing in her words, but rather an ebullient, joyful and sincere passion for contemporary art and curiosity about the world and all the artworks it has to offer. After all, she has worked on supporting young artists for years.
She is a collector of contemporary artworks, numbering around 1,500, from the likes of Anish Kapoor, Maurizio Cattelan, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, to Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman and Adrián Villar Rojas, to name a few. At the same time, she collects costume jewelry, totaling about 1,000 pieces, and photographs — about 3,000 of them.
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Not surprisingly, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo hails from a family of collectors since her mother collected porcelain, and her father, who owned a plastic-injection company, assembled historical plastic objects dating back to the late 19th century.
Inspired in London
Sandretto Re Rebaudengo credits a trip to London in 1992 for her passion for collecting artworks, and “the exhibitions in the galleries, meeting the gallery owners and, especially, the visits to artists in their studios. I will forever remember the morning spent in the studio of Anish Kapoor, among his extraordinary sculptures: that memory for me has the value of an imprinting, it determined the way I have since then chosen and collected artworks. Even today, my collection is founded on the dialogue with the artists and the in-depth knowledge of their research.”
Three years later, she established the Fondazione Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, her hometown.
“Initially, I gave the collection an articulated structure based on Italian art, photography, women’s art and the British and California scenes. This systematic approach comes from my own education, the university studies in economics, and the entrepreneurial tradition of my family. In time, that grid loosened in favor of a wider range of interests, impacted by the course of art itself and the clear expansion of the art audience, increasingly open and global,” she says.
The foundation, a nonprofit institution, has allowed her “to transform a private passion in a more open dimension, publicly committed.”
So far, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has made a point of marking every decade with a major exhibition dedicated to the works bought through the years, from” Bidibidobidiboo” in 2005 to “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” in 2015. She teases that the next exhibit at the end of October “will be a surprise.”
Each exhibition “reaffirms the reasons that led me to start the collection. Art has taught me to be curious, never to be afraid of opinions that are different from mine, and to face the beauty and the dizziness that every new and complex thought brings.”
She aims to mark the anniversary “the same way we celebrate a person’s birthday, because the Fondazione is a space that is made alive by people,” the artists, the team, the children who attend its classes and the visitors.
On April 8, she will stage three solo exhibitions “reflecting our vocation to research and the attention to young talents,” with the works of Teresa Solar Abboud, Jem Perucchini and Marwa Arsanios. These highlight the relations the foundation has developed over the years with international institutions such as the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid and the MACBA in Barcelona. Perucchini’s exhibit will continue at the CAAC — Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain. Arsanios’ exhibit reflects the foundation’s commitment to gender equity and will move on to Artium, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country, in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.
In June, an exhibit will be dedicated to Alessandra Ferrini.
Asked what strikes her and attracts her the most to a specific artist, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo says it is the ability “to interpret and reflect the complexity of our times with innovative or traditional visual languages: a video generated from an algorithm, a painting, a sculpture, a drawing.”
Art, she continues, “offers us new ways to see the world, allowing us to explore themes, issues and emergencies from different perspectives, enriching our understanding of reality. I love artists who know how to pose questions, create connections, experiment and open new ways of thinking, challenging conventions. Art is a process in continuous evolution and what interests me the most is to accompany artists in their path, supporting them in their growth and in the realization of their ideas.”
In fact, training has always been key for Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who has been teaching for years the course “The art professions. Strategy of foundations” at Milan’s IULM University. “Involving children and youngsters is surely one of our main objectives. Seeing them participate to our laboratories, listening to their questions and following the thread of their thoughts is surely one of the greatest satisfactions in my work,” she says.
Helping Young Curators
To wit, she established the Young Curators Residency Programme in 2007, and Campo, initiated in 2012 and aimed at aspiring Italian curators. The former helps three young curators every year develop their expertise and promotes Italian contemporary art abroad, which leads to staging an exhibition of Italian artists selected by the curators during their residency in Italy.
This year, the exhibition will be presented in May at Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in Guarene, near the Piedmontese town of Cuneo. The restored 18th-century building houses the contemporary art museum of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Here and in Turin, in the second half of the year, she is planning two exhibitions of the Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and a book on the history of the foundation. The celebrations in Turin will also take place during Artissima, a point of reference for artists and collectors from all over the world, which this year will run Oct. 31 to Nov. 2.
She points out that, further contributing to the importance of Turin as a key contemporary art hub, at the end of November the city will host the yearly conference of CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, and the event will take place at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, with Fondazione Torino Musei and the Rivoli Castle.
Her international vision led her to create La Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid in January 2017. Why Madrid?
“I love Spain so much, I consider it my second mother country. In Spain I have many friends and I am fascinated by its culture and its people. Madrid is a great global capital and a bridge with Latin America, a continent that is increasingly important in the contemporary artistic scene,” she explains. “It is an open and nomadic institution. We started by building solid relations with the community, staging solo exhibitions in always different venues, extraordinary spaces, little-known and unexpected where we present young influential artists in Spain for the first time.”
The Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid is currently staging a solo exhibit at the Pabellón de los Hexágonos, at the city’s Casa de Campo, of works never seen before by young French artist Pol Taburet, who hails from Guadalupe. On June 3, it will inaugurate the collective exhibition of the sixth edition of the Young Curator Residency Programme Madrid in the Nadie Nunca Nada No training center in the Spanish city.
“The sites of the Fondazione are inhabited places, where an exhibition, a video, an installation, a painting become part of our days as sources of inspiration and thought. Places where you learn, invent, experiment and talk,” she says.
First U.S. Exhibit
This year also marks the first exhibition of her collection in the U.S.
“Through Their Eyes: Selections From the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection,” on view Jan. 26 to June 22 at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California Davis, shines the light on 30 groundbreaking women artists, from Giulia Andreani, Vanessa Beecroft, and Nan Goldin to Barbara Kruger, Wangari Mathenge, Danielle Mckinney, Tracey Moffatt and Cindy Sherman, to name a few. The exhibit “underscores our commitment in enhancing the women’s creativity and perspective in contemporary art,” says Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.
Responding to a question about the Italian artistic landscape, she believes that “Italy has a vivacious artistic scene, with many talents and institutions that work to promote contemporary art.” That said, she sees “margins for growth: a bigger support of artists, more investments in institutions and a stronger dialogue between private and public are necessary.”
For sure, there is no stopping Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who bought the island of San Giacomo in Paludo in the Venice lagoon to house another venue for her namesake foundation. “We hope to complete the works by 2026,” she says, adding this fulfills a long-held wish to have a location in Venice. “When my husband and I discovered the island of San Giacomo we immediately realized that it was the perfect place. This small strip of land in the midst of the lagoon weaves old stories and is a precious natural environment. For the past three years, the island has become for me the outpost of dreams,” she muses.
The restoration work needs to respect the history and the value of the location, abandoned for 60 years, as well as its ecosystem, she says. Through centuries, pilgrims stopped at the monastery there, and then the island became a vineyard, a vegetable garden and eventually a fortified military site. “Our project is to transform it into a garden, to restore the crumbling buildings, the former powder magazines, recovering them as exhibition spaces. Here the Fondazione will organize exhibitions, performances, artistic residences, conferences, live shows, involving art, architecture, music, cinema, theater and dance,” she says.
The island of San Giacomo will be entirely self-sufficient in terms of energy, an eco-sustainable center which will allow the discussion, through art, of “the crucial issues of climate change and environment.”
On the island last year, during the 60th Venice Art Biennale, the foundation presented a project by Korean artist dancer and choreographer Eun-Me Ahn called “Pinky Pinky ‘Good,’” “a collective and transformative ritual for blessing, inspired by Korean shamanic tradition and conceived especially” for the island, “hence honoring its new existence as a location for contemporary art,” she remarks.
Sandretto Re Rebaudengo also inaugurated the Parco d’Arte in 2019, the foundation’s permanent open-air installation of sculptures and installations by international artists on the San Licerio hill in Guarene. In May and September, it will see the arrival of two new works of art.
“This is a project I really love and that I have strongly wanted. The intention was to join contemporary art with an extraordinary landscape, the beauty of the Piedmontese hills of Roero, a UNESCO patrimony. We started with installing sculptures from my collection and now we commission expansive site-specific works in communication with the natural environment.”
Access is free and the immersive experience “offers an opportunity to connect with nature walking through the artworks, the Nebbiolo vineyards, the willow trees, cypresses and oaks. The path within the park is conceived to offer a variety of walks and views, allowing visitors to explore the installations from different perspectives,” she remarks.
Fashion and Art
Asked to comment on the strengthening connection between fashion brands and art, she believes this is “interesting and positive. These two worlds share a strong creative dimension, the ability to interpret the present and to imagine the future.”
The collaborations have led to collections, exhibitions and cultural projects “that enrich the global artistic landscape. This synergy offers artists new platforms of visibility and allows fashion to explore deeper conceptual dimensions. I think, for example, of collaborations such as Louis Vuitton with Takashi Murakami.”
The foundation, she continues, has “always believed in the importance of the support of contemporary art also through synergies with other cultural sectors.” What is essential, however, is that the relationship between fashion and art not be limited to an aesthetic or commercial operation. “It should be an opportunity for an authentic conversation that could generate new narrations,” she adds.
To this end, the foundation’s project ArtColLab is based precisely on these assumptions. “What makes it special is also its nonprofit nature: the proceeds of the collaborations are reinvested in the support of contemporary art and in the educational activities of the Fondazione, in addition to supporting other philanthropic initiatives.”
Examples of these collaborations include that between Paul Kneale and Nicholas Kirkwood on the “realization of extraordinary footwear,” and limited-edition sweaters stemming from the exchange between Michael Armitage and Stella Jean. “Every collaboration is a meeting of ideas, of sensibility and savoir-faire, and every piece created brings with it a story to be told. At a time of increasing crosspollination of disciplines, ArtColLab represents for us a way to strengthen the connection between art and applied creativity, supporting at the same time an ethical and sustainable vision of the cultural production.”
On a personal level, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo considers “fashion a form of art, a language through which one can express one’s identity, reflect the times and creatively experiment. As with contemporary art, also in fashion I appreciate the ability to innovate, break the schemes in a conversation with society.”
In particular, she seeks “style, a personal style that can communicate how I am to the outside, what I think and what I love. I pay a lot of attention in the choice of clothes, colors, and shoes. But it’s especially the light of the artificial stones of my costume jewelry, the American bijoux that I have been collecting for a long time, that express my personality. Before leaving home, every morning, I never forget to pin a luminous brooch on the jacket or to wear a colorful and joyful necklace on a dress.”
On what she believes differentiates her foundation from others, she says she created it “imagining it as a hospitable place, an open venue, an agorà. We try to attract as many people as possible to art. I am convinced that contemporary art should not only be looked at and admired but understood and lived, and it is for this that the Fondazione exists, to always keep the conversation between artists and visitors alive and constant.”
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