With its highest budget in thirteen years, Fondazione Arte CRT’s art oriented institution, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, confirmed its confidence in the galleries present at Artissima, Turin’s international contemporary art fair. In fact, it has increased the historic fund earmarked for acquisitions from 280,000 euros last year to 300,000 euros. A choice that testifies to its willingness to continue investing in the enhancement of contemporary art and the shared cultural heritage of Turin and its territory. During the 2025 edition, the Foundation acquired twenty-six new works created by eleven artists, intended as always for public enjoyment.
The works of John Giorno, Cian Dayrit, Majd Abdel Hamid, John Menick, Felix Shumba, and Valentina Furian will become part of the permanent collection of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, while the works of David Schutter, Simon Callery, Alessandro Pessoli, Marco Cingolani, and the couple Franciszka and Stefan Themerson will be destined for the GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino.
For twenty-five years, Fondazione Arte CRT has been among the main partners of Artissima, which it supports with various contributions and, in particular, through its acquisitions campaign. This collaboration stems from the conviction that the fair represents a unique opportunity for Turin to consolidate its role in the international art scene.
Through acquisitions, the Foundation supports the galleries and artists present at the fair, nurturing one of the most prestigious contemporary art collections. Today the collection has more than 950 works by some 380 artists, for a total investment of more than 42 million euros. The works range from painting, sculpture, video, photography, large-scale installations and NFT, reflecting a broad and inclusive vision of contemporary art languages. In line with the Foundation’s mission, all the acquired works are made immediately available to the two museums in Turin for exhibition activities and loans to other institutions, allowing Castello di Rivoli and GAM a constant updating of their collections and an ongoing dialogue with the international art scene.
“The Fondazione Arte CRT, acting on behalf of the Fondazione CRT, strongly renews its commitment to Artissima, the leading contemporary art fair in Italy and one of the most internationally recognized,” commented Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, president of the Fondazione Arte CRT. “On the occasion of our 25th anniversary, we wanted to further strengthen this bond by increasing the acquisitions fund to 300,000 euros-the largest allocation in recent years-to concretely support the work of the galleries and artists present at the fair. Through the acquisitions made also thanks to the invaluable support of our Scientific Committee, the works will become part of the collections of GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino and Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, going to enrich two public heritages of extraordinary value and contributing to strengthen the role of Turin as the capital of contemporary art.”
Also present at Artissima this year, for the third consecutive year, was the Fondazione Arte CRT’s Scientific Committee, composed of such international figures as Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, Susanne Pfeffer, director of the Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and Vicente Todolí, artistic director of the Fondazione Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan. Also participating remotely were Manuel Segade Lodeiro, director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and Suhanya Raffel, director of Museum M+ in Hong Kong. The committee, the Foundation’s advisory body on acquisitions, collaborated with the directors and chief curators of Castello di Rivoli and GAM in selecting the works, identifying works capable of further enriching the artistic heritage of the two institutions.
“A very special moment in Turin, a city of art that Artissima animates together with the exhibitions of the different cultural institutions in the area. This year many of them are celebrating important anniversaries - including Fondazione Arte CRT, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary,” said the Scientific Committee of Fondazione Arte CRT about the acquisitions. “A dynamic moment, because - to paraphrase Italo Calvino - in Turin you can write, because here past and future coexist in the present with a force that is rarer elsewhere. This is perceived even more at Artissima, through the curated sections, where pioneering artists and galleries reaffirm this attitude: in an age in which much information circulates but also much amnesia, it is necessary to ’protest against the obvious.’ For this reason Artissima presents works by pioneering, sometimes forgotten artists who deserve to be rediscovered and re-read. As Erwin Panofsky stated, ’the future is sometimes invented from fragments of the past.’ Hence the need to preserve memory and, at the same time, support emerging artists: because past history is also the anticipation of the future. It is impressive to see in Turin the number of directors, curators and art world professionals meeting these days. Turin is always worth a trip. And as Alighiero Boetti said, ’art brings sun and light to Turin.’”
The works acquired for Castello di Rivoli include Majd Abdel Hamid’s video and textile works, works with objects, embroidery, images and digital prints on fabric by Cian Dayrit, John Giorno’s DIAL-A-POEM Push Button Edition project, Valentina Furian’s Eclipse video, John Menick’s Telharmonium and Felix Shumba’s charcoal drawings.
“Poetry as a space of continuous creative elaboration (John Giorno); the utopia of hyper-technology and its failure (John Menick); the tension between vision, control and vulnerability (Valentina Furian); line and color as tools to process loss and mourning (Majd Abdel Hamid); reference to cartography to deal with the trauma of colonial legacy (Cian Dayrit); and the invention of techniques as a form of resistance to extractivist policies (Felix Shumba). This selection for the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea brings together artists whose works address the complexity of the present and the fragility of the human condition. They are works with strong political and social connotations but capable of maintaining a poetic dimension, with practices that can accommodate slow gestures where individual creativity becomes a space of freedom and resistance,” said Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Director Francesco Manacorda.
Instead, works by Simon Callery, Marco Cingolani, Alessandro Pessoli, David Schutter and Franciszka and Stefan Themerson’s color film are destined for GAM in Turin.
“I am very happy that GAM’s collection will be enriched by the works of artists who, although they come from different backgrounds, maintain a deep connection with Italian and European art history. The acquisitions of David Schutter, Simon Callery, Alessandro Pessoli, Marco Cingolani and the couple Franciszka and Stefan Themerson testify to the museum’s attention to artistic research that crosses geographic and temporal boundaries, but finds in Italy an ideal point of reference. These works dialogue with the history and contemporaneity of painting and the moving image, reinforcing GAM’s mission to build a living collection, capable of reflecting the complexity and vitality of art today, but also through history,” said GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea director Chiara Bertola.
With these new acquisitions, Fondazione Arte CRT renews its vocation to support contemporary art, promoting the cultural growth and dissemination of the artistic heritage of the Turin area, with a view to openness, collaboration and international vision.
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| Artissima: Fondazione Arte CRT purchases twenty-six works with the highest budget in thirteen years |
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