The last time I saw Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo was over dinner in her villa in Turin. We sipped prosecco while admiring an installation by Tony Cragg, which was just one of dozens of museum-quality contemporary works that looked remarkably at home in the elegant, neo-classical rooms.
Today we are in the less heady environs of a private dining room at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, a chestnut-haired beauty in chiselled black shirt dress and suede stilettos, is as disarming as ever. Such is her glamour, it would be easy to dismiss her as one of those collectors who leave the decision-making to an art adviser. In fact she is no trophy hunter. There is not a piece in her collection about which she cannot talk with education and enthusiasm.
“I choose everything!” she tells me, surprised that I could imagine otherwise. Francesco Bonami, a leading curator, has been the artistic director of her eponymous art foundation in Turin since she set it up in 1995. “Because he travels a lot, he sees things I do not and makes suggestions. But nothing is bought unless I want it.”
Her collection of more than 1,000 pieces includes work by stars such as Charles Ray, Rosemarie Troekel and Felix González-Torres. It is not on permanent display at the foundation, however: instead, the building is devoted to temporary visiting exhibitions and educational programmes.
“I never wanted a private museum because my aim was to open a space where new generations of artists ... could have the opportunity to produce and show new works: a flexible space, ever-changing and exploring.”
Her own collection greets the world through temporary exhibitions in different spaces. Now it is London’s turn. As part of its series showcasing outside collections, Whitechapel Gallery is mounting three exhibitions of works owned by her in the next year. The first, which opened on September 24, is devoted to Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, who is famous for such sculptures as “Him” (2001), which shows a Hitler kneeling in prayer, and “The Ninth Hour” (1999), which shows the Pope crushed by a meteorite, that leave viewers reeling in confusion. Is he a genuine subversive, advocating revolution? Or is he a prankster, churning out provocative images for profit?
Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is in no doubt that the artist is a seer. “He is a melancholy jester,” she says, adding that among the first pieces she bought from him was “Lullaby” (1994), a bag of debris gathered from the site of a Mafia bombing. “He makes you reflect on the important things, even tragic things. But he never uses propaganda, he never tells you what to think.”
Those from an Anglo-American culture may struggle to comprehend. Yet in Italy, where corruption of Church, state and business is regularly glossed over with an arcane, Mediterranean formality, Cattelan’s ambiguous shock tactics act as a bridge. In a bid to make viewers “emotionally and intellectually involved, he wants to disconcert and make you reflect”.
Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s creative encounters with London began in 1992 when, thanks to a friendship with gallerist Monika Sprüth, she found herself at the heart of London’s burgeoning contemporary art scene. On a visit to the studio of Anish Kapoor with Lisson Gallery founding director Nicholas Logsdail, “the floor was covered in little sculptures of blue, yellow and red pigment and Anish stood there explaining his work to us,” she recalls. “That was the moment I decided to become a collector of contemporary art.”
Such enthusiasm was never a given. The daughter of a wealthy Turin industrialist, she grew up in a privileged world that was cultured but scarcely avant-garde. Her mother collected Sèvres and Meissen porcelain “with a care that inspired my own approach” but she suspects that it was being “surrounded by antiques that pushed me towards the contemporary myself.”
An economics degree at Turin university and a brief spell in the family business helped to build a commercial acumen that is essential to the health of her non-profit foundation and the artists it supports. Today, the purpose-built minimalist edifice in Turin welcomes 98,000 visitors a year. It has won a solid reputation for thoughtful shows, and the current exhibition, entitled For President, explores the images – from photojournalism to advertising – with which US election campaigns flood public consciousness.
Notable is Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s commitment to female artists. Not only does her own collection feature works by Vanessa Beecroft, Cindy Sherman and Rosemarie Trockel, but in 2004, she devoted the whole year’s exhibition cycle to art by women. Today, 70 per cent of the visitors to the foundation are female.
Complex yet coherent, the character of both her collection and the work of the foundation supports her insistence that she has never regarded art as an investment. “When I buy, I don’t look at the name of the artist nor the value the work might potentially have. It is the works themselves that guide my choice.”
Our conversation is only brought to a halt by the arrival of the collector’s son, Eugenio, who has just finished a Masters at the LSE and is now a member of First Futures, Tate’s young patrons programme. There are gales of laughter as Eugenio tells us that his dissertation subject was “Art as an Asset Class”. Shaking his head, he says he tries to “bring that perspective to my mother” but that he is making little progress. “When she says art is a passion, she doesn’t say it to be nice. It is really true.”
‘Collection Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: Maurizio Cattelan’, Whitechapel Gallery, London, to December 2, www.whitechapelgallery.org
