Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is the exhibition arm of a major contemporary art collection. Its Turin centre, opened in 2002 in the San Paolo district on land once occupied by abandoned industrial facilities, brings rotating exhibitions of young and established international artists to a purpose-designed hall by Claudio Silvestrin.

Why it matters

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo began collecting contemporary art in the early 1990s and built a foundation that now operates from four sites — Turin, Guarene in Piedmont, Venice and an art park on the San Licerio hill. The Turin venue, functioning since 2002, was conceived explicitly in the model of a kunsthalle: a space for producing and showing new work rather than displaying a permanent hang. For visitors, this means every visit differs; the hall is given over wholly to temporary exhibitions, often first Italian showings of artists who later become household names. Its education department runs programmes for schools, families, adults and teachers. In a city whose contemporary art map runs from Arte Povera to the present, this foundation represents the collecting-energy side of that story.

What to notice

Silvestrin's architecture rewards attention before the art does: minimalist volumes, restrained materials and flexible spaces designed specifically for exhibition use, on the site of the former Fergat industrial area. Each exhibition reconfigures the adaptable hall, and installations frequently respond to its scale. The programme balances solo shows of emerging artists with thematic group exhibitions drawn from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection.

Context and history

The foundation took formal shape in the 1990s as contemporary collecting in Italy professionalised, and its Turin centre opened in 2002 on a ninety-nine-year leasehold granted over the disused industrial estate in San Paolo. The district, once dense with factories serving Turin's manufacturing economy, was then beginning its conversion into a mixed residential and creative quarter, and the foundation was among the cultural pioneers that anchored that shift. Claudio Silvestrin, an architect associated with minimalist gallery design internationally, drew the building as a set of simple, versatile halls rather than a monument. Over the following two decades the venue mounted a continuous sequence of exhibitions and commissions, developed training programmes for young professionals in the art field, and extended the foundation's reach to Guarene, Venice and the outdoor Art Park. It stands today among the pillars of Turin's contemporary system beside GAM and the Fondazione Merz.