MADRID.- “Spirit and Space”, is the title of the exhibition that Fundación Banco Santander organises at the Santander Art Gallery at Boadilla’s Financial City from February 9th until April 29th.

124 works of art, 69 artists from 20 different countries that not only form a selection of what stands out most of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo’s Collection –one of the most important in the world- and in contemporary art of the last thirty years, that also reflects its essence in a spectacular mounting that establishes continually a dialogue with the public through all of its works in its nearly three thousand square metres of Santander’s Exhibition Room exhibitive sphere.

The exhibit brings to Madrid most important and latest acquisitions of the Collection, amongst which stand out Pae White’s Still, untitled (2010) and James Casebere’s Landscape with Houses (2009), together with other pieces of great significance such as Maurizio Cattelan’s Bidibidobidiboo, Damien Hirst’s Love is Great or Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane. A 21st Century Portrait—video co-produced by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo— that will be the able to be gazed at in Spain for the first time.

In Francesco Bonami’s words, the exhibition’s curator the idea of the exhibition “emerged as an inspiration when observing Santander’s collection “El Greco’s” works of art”. In Bonami’s opinion, space and spirit/the earthly and the heavenly constitute the central axes of the paintings of the Cretan artist, and that was the reason for the homonym title for the exhibition, so that is “why we chose the works of art from Sandretto’s Collection that best reflected the way in which the sprit and the space remain in the roots of contemporary art”. Bonami also highlights Goya’s unquestionable referent about nature’s violent manifestations in works such as the Chapman’s brother’s Cyber iconic man (1996) and the work of the 18th century painter.

120 photographs, 22 sculptures, 16 paintings, 14 drawings, 5 installations and 4 video installations as well as a tapestry and a work of serigraphy make up the exhibition. Eighteen artists from United States, 5 Latin American, 3 Japanese, 2 from Israel, 2 Polish and other nationalities constitute a meeting point of nearly twenty countries and 70 artists, 3 of them award-winners such as Premio Turner such as Anish Kapoor, Damien Hirst and Douglas Gordon, as well as many more nominated Gary Hume, Steven Pippin, Yinka Shonibare or the Chapman brothers. Charles Ray’s Untitled (1973) is the exhibition’s most ancient work of art, whilst the most recent one is Pae White’s, Still, Untitled (2010).

The exhibition structure itself, as in a triangle, in three cardinal points, that are according to Bonami “different rituals in the adulthood in today’s society”. Fiona Tan’s San Sebastián with its young Japanese women constitute the first vertex; Doug Aitken’s Electric Heart with its Afro-American group in Los Angeles’ deserted streets make up the second one and Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s A 21st Century Portrait, – a video co- produced by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo-, that portraits the football player Zidane as mystic figure practising the modern rite of a football match forms the third vertex.

In an age in which the space and the spirit as well as the beliefs are going through a process of fragmentation, this exhibition tries to suggest that “trough the art, the spirit and the space can keep together, strengthen one another and establish the role that each one of us plays”.

THE SANDRETTO RE REBAUDENGO COLLECTION
As Patrizia Sandretto (Founder and owner of the Foundation) stated, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo was born in 1995, fruit of her desire, of “supporting and propelling young artists and making contemporary art closer to a public bigger and bigger”. The collection has built itself gathering works of artist before they became well-known at an international level. Nowadays it hosts over 200 works of art that have traced the history of contemporary art from the eighties until today, amongst which Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney, Vanessa Beecroft, the Chapman brothers, Maurizio Cattelan, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Glenn Brown, Anish Kapoor, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Sarah Lucas, Esko Mannikko, Reinhard Mucha, Gabriel Orozco, Rudolf Stingel, Cindy Sherman or Rosmarie Trockel from many other stand out.

Many of them have exhibited their works of art in very important institutions and that, at present the most important museums and world collectors fight for. From the beginning, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo turned her attention to young artists from Italy and outside her own country. It is through travelling and visiting museums, exhibitions, art galleries and artist’s studios that she observes the contemporary context and the new productions. From the first moment the Collection develops itself rigorously and it’s organised by subject matter: English art, Italian art, feminine genre art, art from Los Angeles, photography. From 1992 to 1995 the Collection has merely a private function, although the desire of showing it to the public takes shape in a first exhibition that in 1994 gathers sixteen English artists amongst which Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Julian Opie stand out in an exhibition in an industrial venue in Sant’Antonino di Susa and requested afterwards in 1995 by the Galleria Civica di Modena for the small palace in the gardens.

Since 1995 the Collection is guarded by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo that promotes the public access to its exhibitions in Guarene d’Alba and in Turin. It is the same year, that Francesco Bonami is named responsible of the Foundation’s programmes. The works of art purchased are lent to different cultural Italian and Europena institutions. In February 1996, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Castello di Rivoli invites Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and other collectors to put forward part of their collection in the exhibition Collecting in Turin. Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo chooses to exhibit some works of feminine genre. The creativity of this kind of art will continue to develop itself in the collection and will be object of great attention in the coming years. Since the 1997 the Palazzo Re Rebaudengo en Guarene de Alba becomes the Fondazione’s main exhibition centre.

The Collection today continues to grow and is no longer restricted by the initial thematic structuring. Works from the Collection have been presented in Italian (Macro Testaccio, Rome; Rotonda di Via Besana, Milan) and foreign museums in Austria, Germany, Spain, Greece, France and Montecarlo.