An advocate of contemporary art

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo started her journey in contemporary art as a collector in the early 90s. Her passion for art became an organised activity when in 1995 she founded the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo which she chairs. She is a member of the International Council of the MoMA of New York, the International Council of the Tate Gallery of London, the Leadership Council of the New Museum of New York, the Advisory Committee for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Conseil d'Administration de l' École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and the Committee of Art Basel Cities. In Italy, she has been member of the National Confindustria Culture Commission since 2008 and President of the Contemporary Art Foundations Committee since 2014. She teaches Theories and Forms of the Art Market at the IULM, Free University of Languages and Communication in Milan. She has been awarded several prizes and in 2020 was nominated "Ambassador in the world of Turin excellence".

It signifies history, knowledge, skills, creativity. Craftsmanship recounts our relationship with objects, places and materials and is an essential shadow of what we call "material culture": a set of values embedded in the things that inhabit and animate our daily, individual and social life. Today craftsmanship is one of the rare scopes in which the relationship between the object, our hands and our body is still clear, strong and visible.

The clothes I wear, for example, are designed and crafted by a tailor: they are original pieces, the result of the encounter between my personal taste and the talent of an expert craftsman. These dresses accompany me in everyday life: when I go to the office, on the occasion of the openings of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo or when I visit museums. They are the result of a dialogue, of the intertwining of my way of being and a range of knowledge, skills, vocation for research in the field of fabrics, colours, textures and cuts.

Almost all the artists who exhibit in the Fondazione rely on artisanal wisdom. The most recent case is the monumental sculpture by the French artist Marguerite Humeau. It is a permanent site-specific work installed in the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Art Park. The aluminum sculpture was created by the capable technicians of a foundry in Turin who worked side by side with the artist, using contemporary tools and technologies with an ancient know-how.

On the table at home and on the tables of Spazio7, the restaurant of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo led by my son Emilio Re Rebaudengo, vases by the artist and designer Alessandro Ciffo never go amiss. We love these dynamic, soft and colourful objects because they reinterpret the tradition of ceramics with a contemporary vision.