This article is part of our special report on the Art for Tomorrow conference in the Italian cities of Florence and Solomeo.
FLORENCE, Italy — Walk into Palazzo Strozzi, a 16th-century palace in the heart of Florence, and now, amid the classical columns and arched windows in the courtyard, you will find a rocket several stories tall. The rocket, “GONOGO,” by the Polish artist Goshka Macuga, is the most sizable work — but not the only spotlight-grabber — in an exhibition that celebrates a collector trying to rally attention to the art and artists of today.
“Contemporary art,” Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo said, “is the best instrument we have to render our world a bit more comprehensible.” That conviction has driven her to become one of Europe’s most prominent collectors, as well as a patron of living artists and an evangelist of contemporary art.
The Palazzo Strozzi show, “Reaching for the Stars,” which runs through June 18, celebrates the 30th anniversary of her collection. This week, Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is also presenting her vision of how collectors can bolster culture in a panel at the “Art for Tomorrow” conference here in Florence, organized by the Democracy & Culture Foundation, with The New York Times.
“Today’s patrons have a duty to society to engage the public with art,” Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo said. “Art isn’t just for decorating our houses. For those of us that can afford to buy and commission art, we need to share it with the world.”
The Palazzo Strozzi exhibition lays out more than 70 selections from Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s 1,500-work collection as testaments to her taste, which has often been a bellwether of contemporary art movements. It’s apt, then, that the show feels like a tour of recent art history, complete with everything from early works by the Young British Artists Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas and the button-pushing humor of Maurizio Cattelan, to figurative painting’s resurgence in works by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Michael Armitage.
There were few institutions in Italy dedicated to contemporary art when Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo became a collector some 30 years ago, but she has sought to change that, seeking to provide art for all over the decades.
Today, art collections are frequently viewed as investments or status symbols, with artworks often ending up displayed in private homes or stashed in free-port storage, never to be seen again by the public. In recent years, though, a handful of collectors have followed Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s lead and shared their collections, opening locations such as the Fondazione Prada and the Pinault Collection to the public. These institutions expand access to contemporary art and help shape the art canon of today — just as museums like the Uffizi and the Guggenheim did in eras past.
If art is essential to broaden our understanding of our times and ourselves, then amassing a collection might be seen as an endeavor that comes with immense opportunity, and perhaps responsibility. “A collector that’s going to count today,” said Arturo Galansino, director general of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and curator of the exhibition, “needs to leave the ivory tower and create these kinds of collaborations for the greater good of society.”
“Not everyone can purchase art, but everyone can go to a museum and see art,” Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo said in an interview after a dinner to celebrate the show’s opening, describing her life’s work. “I’ve been so fortunate to get to know artists and dialogue with them, and I wanted to give something back to the artists and to others.”
Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s formula — a nonprofit foundation with the aim of presenting contemporary art to the public, a unique approach to buying art, and a commitment to funding the creation of new artworks — has made her a decisive player in the art world and a benevolent favorite among artists.
“The artists are like my children,” she said. “I want to help them make their careers and build networks, to get their voices heard and their work seen.” When she began collecting in the early ’90s, the young talents were her contemporaries, but now, the artists are the peers of her actual children. “Some of the artists even call me mamma,” she said. She smiled brightly at this.
Just as female artists are underrepresented in the art world, so are female art collectors. “It’s really beautiful for me to be here and find a woman running the show,” said Ambera Wellmann, a Canadian painter whose solo exhibition is now on view at Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s Turin, Italy, foundation. “There are a slew of collectors out there who collect artists based on popular opinion and reputation, but Patrizia has her own taste and has been collecting women since before it was popular to do so,” Ms. Wellmann said, citing early purchases of Cindy Sherman and Catherine Opie.
Born to an industrialist family from Turin, Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo studied business and economics but found a passion for art during a trip to London and the studio of Anish Kapoor. She brought home new artwork and a new vocation, starting the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 1995. Soon after, she and her husband, Agostino, a renewable-energy mogul of aristocratic lineage, transformed a family palazzo into a museum space in Guarene.
Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo opened an extension of the foundation in Turin with sprawling exhibition galleries. Her Madrid foundation works on a different model, hosting itinerant shows around the Spanish capital such as one, at present, in the library of Ateneo de Madrid, featuring the forest landscapes of the Brazilian painter Lucas Arruda. The collector has made it her mission to exhibit primarily young artists, and her institutions welcome thousands of students each year.
In 2018, the couple acquired an entire island in Venice — San Giacomo in Paludo, an abandoned military station; it is now under construction as an outpost of the foundation.
“With Patrizia, you know your work is going to be seen, that it’s not going to be stagnant,” said Ms. Macuga, the Polish artist behind “GONOGO.” Her rocket, after its mission at Palazzo Strozzi, will make its home on San Giacomo as a sentinel visible to passing boats. The piece, like the artist’s monumental woven tapestry for the 2009 Venice Biennale, was produced with Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s sponsorship.
Such works would be prohibitively costly and complicated to fabricate without a supporter like Ms. Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who has underwritten creations by artists such as Alicja Kwade, Doug Aitken, Josh Kline, Rachel Rose and others.
“There aren’t a lot of private collectors who want to do this kind of work,” Ms. Macuga said. Buyers these days are frequently consumed by “investing and trying to make more money than they already have, but this is the basic level of collecting,” the artist added. “It’s another thing to take art to the real world where you put the work to work — to educate and inspire people.”
Laura Rysman
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