Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo only has one rug in her large turn-of-the-century home in Turin, and even that is an artwork. The oversized carpet rendition of a Bel Paese cheese label is by Maurizio Cattelan, the Italian artist known for darkly humorous work including a suicidal stuffed squirrel slumped over a table, a gun on the floor at its feet. Along with a chandelier by Cerith Wyn Evans and a monumental collage by Annette Messager of hundreds of images of body parts, the Cattelan carpet never leaves Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s house, whose all-white walls and original parquet and marble floors serve as a seamless backdrop for exhibiting art.
The same cannot be said ofthe rest of her 1,000-strong contemporary art collection,which she began to amass 25 years ago, after a visit to Anish Kapoor’s studio in London. The economics graduate was accompanying friend and influential dealer, Nicholas Logsdail of the Lisson Gallery (itself 50 this year) and came away with a sculpture made of three bulbs covered in red, yellow and blue pigment.