Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: ‘When I started collecting it was much less about social climbing’

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a one-person dynamo, collector, patron, private museum owner — and queen bee in the contemporary art scene in Italy and far beyond.

She has two art spaces, one custom-built in Turin, the other in the family-owned 18th-century palazzo in Guarene, Piedmont. Despite being engaged in a dizzying array of projects — she has received multiple awards, sits on numerous boards including the International Councils of New York’s MoMA and London’s Tate, and has an active education programme — Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is extremely generous with her time. She is always willing to talk about her 1,500-strong collection of contemporary art and her foundation. And now she is keen to unveil her latest project, a multicultural centre she is establishing on an island she and her husband bought three years ago, in the Venice lagoon.

I meet her in London, where she is attending Frieze Week. As always, she is wearing a spectacular necklace, set with chunky green stones (she has a huge collection of vintage American costume jewellery, which she has been collecting since the late 1980s). It goes perfectly with the colours of her sweater, which comes from a fashion collaboration between artist Michael Armitage and designer Stella Jean. Another of the foundation’s initiatives, the collection raises money for the non-profit Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, which supports young artists in east Africa.

Tiny, elegant and enthusiastic, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo speaks in rapid, fluent English and frequently uses her hands to make a point, or to run her fingers through her short-cropped hair.

Collecting runs in her family. “I grew up surrounded with art, but traditional art, notably Sèvres and Meissen porcelain, which my mother collected,” she explains. “And when I was around 12 years old, I was already collecting pill boxes and cataloguing them. It was before computers, so I noted the material, the cost and so on in exercise books — I still have them!

“My mother took me and my brother to museums, but those showing traditional not contemporary art. Even then, what I was seeing didn’t really speak to me.”

She has often recounted how she discovered contemporary art in 1992 during a trip to London, when Nicholas Logsdail of Lisson gallery took her to Anish Kapoor’s studio. “During that trip I decided to become a collector, and I started to buy contemporary art.” She continues. “I also met Jay Jopling, whose White Cube gallery was still a small space behind Christie’s, and [future Tate director] Nick Serota — they were important influences on me.”

She explains that Logsdail was “a friend of a friend,” and he put her in touch with other dealers and artists. Initially, her first purchases were of artists of her generation, the Italians Carla Accardi, Tano Festa, Mario Merz and Salvatore Scarpitta. “In the 1990s there really weren’t any museums of contemporary art in Italy apart from the Castello di Rivoli, so from the beginning it was important for me to support the artists, to give them a place to exhibit,” she says.

In 1995, she established the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, initially showing her growing collection in the family home of Guarene. In 2002, she opened a low-built minimalist building in Turin, designed by Claudio Silvestrin, as a dedicated art space.

She began supporting a younger generations of artists. “I have learned a lot from them, for example from Avery Singer, Josh Klein, Adrián Villar Rojas, and working with new technology. I have learned as well to listen to them — it is a way of being more tolerant of the world in which we live,” she says. “But for me, the most important thing has been to produce and commission art.”

Those commissions number about 100 today. One recent example is the Fondazione’s collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art to produce time-based works, with Rachel Rose and Martine Syms being the first artists chosen. Earlier commissions were shown at the Venice Biennale, such as Doug Aitken’s eight-channel video installation Electric Earth in 1999, which won the international prize, while WeltenLinie (2017) — an installation by the Polish sculptor Alicja Kwade — was shown at the 57th Biennale.

“I never thought of collecting as just acquiring works to hang on my walls,” Sandretto Re Rebaudengo explains. We have a brief amused discussion about some newly-minted buyers of contemporary art and true collectors. She puts her hand over my tape recorder when we get to names: “Off the record!” she says, laughing. “When I started collecting, things were so different, it was so much less about social climbing. I remember the 1995 Venice Biennale, no yachts, no boats, no parties, far fewer people . . . ”

We turn to the Venetian project and she gets out her tablet to show me pictures of the island of San Giacomo in Paludo, which she and her husband bought in 2018. Abandoned since the 1960s, it sits between Murano and Burano and is apparently 10 minutes by boat from San Marco. “This is a way for me and my husband to work together, it’s a joint project,” she says. Her husband Agostino Re Rebaudengo founded Asja Ambiente Italia, a renewable energy company, in 1995, and is also co-founder and vice-president of the Fondazione.

Since they bought the island, the couple have been in discussion with the Venetian municipality as to how they will reconfigure it. They will have a house there for themselves and guests, another for residencies, used notably during each Venice Biennale. “During those periods, the vaporetti will stop at the island to bring visitors,” Sandretto Re Rebaudengo explains. “We will have exhibitions, performances, artist residencies, as well as research activities for sustainability and renewable energy.”

The island has a long history — it was the site of a monastery in the 11th century, used as a temporary hospital in the 15th century and then to store gunpowder until the mid-20th century, as attested by the now-ruined edifices. For the moment it can only be accessed via private boat, but it still has some intact buildings, and there was a church, although it is not clear exactly where it was. Since every Venetian island had a spire, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is thinking of commissioning an artist to recreate one.

The current plan is to be open for the 2024 Biennale (“I hope!” she interjects), but some of the spaces may be ready for the 2023 architecture Biennale. “We are working with the city to see who to choose as architects, engineers, garden planners. When we have all the permissions, we will put the various aspects out to tender.”

Nothing seems to stop Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who is fizzing with ideas for the island. She says that during the 1975 Venice Biennale, the Polish artist Jerzy Grotowski used the San Giacomo for performances as part of his Laboratory Theatre. “Maybe we could recreate a performance before work starts, maybe next year, then we would close, do the work, and reopen two years later for the 2024 Biennale!” she says.

The aim, she concludes, “is to transform San Giacomo from a military site to an island of contemporary culture and sustainability.” And with her energy and determination, she certainly seems sure to achieve this.

fsrr.org