Andreina Cerruti, Chairman of the Fondazione Cerruti, passed away 

Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l’Arte and the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea announce the passing of Andreina Cerruti (Turin, 19 January 1923 – 18 January 2022), Chairman of the Fondazione Cerruti.

The funeral will be held on Thursday 20 January at 12 pm at the Parish Church of the Gran Madre di Dio, Piazza Gran Madre di Dio 4, Turin.
She was the daughter of Giuseppe Cerruti (Genoa, 1890 – Turin, 1972) and Ines Castagneto (Genoa, 1892 – Turin, 1977), the sister of the accountant Francesco Federico (Genoa, 1922 – Turin, 2015) and she had a childhood characterized by an upbringing rigorous and already in school age she was involved in her father’s bookbinding activity.
After attending the ‘Domenico Berti’ State Teaching Institute in Turin, in 1941 Andreina Cerruti began working at LIT (Legatoria Industriale Torinese), the family firm which, thanks to the introduction of the seamless binding technique called ‘perfect binding’, reached the highest levels of production with large quantities of orders relating to the binding of art books and, above all, to Italian telephone guides.
In addition to the entrepreneurial spirit, with her brother Francesco Federico she shared a great love for beauty and art throughout her life, continuing her cultural commitment through the hiring in 2015 of the Presidency of the Foundation he set up. The Fondazione Cerruti gathers together art objects, rare books and bindings, furniture, furnishings, paintings and sculptures. Under her chairmanship, the Cerruti Collection, housed in the Villa near Castello di Rivoli, opened to the public in May 2019.

As Chairman of the Foundation, on the occasion of the recent publication of the ‘Cerruti Collection General Catalogue’ published for the types of Umberto Allemandi, Andreina Cerruti wanted to offer her contribution by drafting the Foreword, which today remains as a precious legacy:

I am particularly pleased that the extraordinary art collection built up by my brother Francesco Federico Cerruti has been opened to the public and that the Cerruti Collection General Catalogue has been completed after two years of work.
His home has become a museum that tells the story of his life and of our entire family, conveying his memory, his shadows and his joys, almost as if the books, objects, paintings and sculptures were able to disclose all this through the language specific to art and poetry.
Our family has always opted for simplicity and discretion and has always shied away from the temptation to be ostentatious, preferring frugality and real work to society gossip. This was probably behind my brother’s need to seek an inner place in art, which is perhaps only permitted to those spirits that follow the true glimmers of existence in silence. Begun in the late 1960s, my brother’s collection is one of broad and varied spatial and chronological boundaries, which can be appreciated as an overall work of art, together with the building that houses it. This was his desire: to offer those who follow him the opportunity to discover his collection in all its characteristic complexity and aesthetic quality. In the statute of his Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l’Arte, he writes that he has “decided to make over [his collection] for the benefit of the national and international community” in the hope that he will “be able to perpetuate the values that inspired it, as well as the sense of patronage, thereby helping to make the Cerruti Collection a dynamic entity and a driving force for cultural growth.”
This is why I believe so strongly in the collaboration between the Castello di Rivoli, which is only a few hundred metres away from Villa Cerruti, and Fondazione Cerruti, thanks to which this home and museum has been open to visitors since May 2019. A fruitful dialogue has been created between contemporary art and that of the past, giving rise to new and unexpected paths of knowledge and memory.
Indeed, this collaboration is a rare and extraordinary example of successful cooperation in art management between a public museum organization, the Castello di Rivoli, and a private entity, such as our Fondazione.
I hope that this relationship will be able to inspire a model that can modernise the sector of cultural assets management.
Being able to see the villa open to the public today and looking through this volume that incorporates my brother’s entire collection, thanks to the impressive work of many years carried out by numerous scholars and art historians, fills me with pride. It is a story that gives us hope, a journey that draws us closer to beauty, which plays host to imagination and wonder, the story of an extraordinary brother and a family that taught us children about the ethic of work and the enchanted gaze of contemplation.
For all this, I would like to thank my brother, without whose curiosity, passion, generosity and forwardthinking none of this would have been achieved. I would also like to thank all those who have enabled this dream to come true: the Castello di Rivoli, everyone who has been involved in this initiative, Gianluca Ferrero, who assisted first my brother and then me in this venture, and all those who will continue to help us make it possible.

Andreina Cerruti, 2021