The Italian collector and humanities patron Nicoletta Fiorucci can’t think about a house with out artwork. “Artwork is home. I wish to be surrounded by artwork—it’s my consolation. I don’t perceive how one can dwell with out contemplating artwork as a companion in your life, with out amassing or going to museums,” Fiorucci advised Artsy. Her eclectic assortment of greater than 2,000 artworks is unfold throughout her properties within the U.Okay., France, and Italy.
Guests to her Venice residence that overlooks the Grand Canal are greeted with artwork earlier than they’ve even walked by way of the entrance door. Two trompe l’oeil works enhance the staircase: Sylvie Fleury’s Chanel Procuring Bag (2008), forged in bronze, and Cinzia Ruggeri’s Borse cane a mano di tessuto (1988), a purse within the form of a canine with an accompanying silver canine bowl. As soon as inside, one of many first items you’ll discover is a big rosette of outsized blue flowers bursting from the ceiling—Overlook-me-not (2020) by the duo Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano. Fiorucci defined that she needed the artworks to offset the constructing’s austere Venetian grandeur, with its excessive ceilings, terrazzo flooring, and marble doorframes.
After 15 years primarily based in London, Venice marks a brand new chapter for Fiorucci and, in some methods, a return dwelling. She grew up in Rome, the place she was uncovered to many non secular work within the metropolis’s church buildings, giving her what she calls “a really classical method to artwork.”
However, when she went along with her father to an artwork public sale as an adolescent, it was a small Dutch oil portray on wooden that turned the primary piece in her assortment. “Residing in Rome, you see solely work with people, saints, angels, or gods,” she recalled. “I fell in love with this little panorama portray as a result of it was nothing like that. My father bid on it and acquired it for me as a present: I discovered it propped up on a chair exterior my bed room once I awakened the subsequent morning!”
It took her some time to develop into enthusiastic about up to date artwork. As an grownup, she moved to London, the place she turned closely concerned within the artwork scene as a patron and member of nonprofit artwork facilities like Studio Voltaire and Gasworks. In 2010, she based the Fiorucci Artwork Belief with the curator Milovan Farronato and started to hone her curiosity in rising artists. “I really feel at dwelling in London,” she stated. “I owe town loads, and realized loads there.”
Till 2021, the Belief ran a program of exhibitions, residencies, and workshops in areas throughout Europe, from appearing as an exhibition accomplice with London’s Serpentine Galleries and Chisenhale Gallery, to inviting artists to dwell and work on the Italian island of Stromboli—with an lively volcano as tempestuous backdrop—or Li Galli, a rocky, legendary archipelago evoked in Homer’s Odyssey that was purchased by Fiorucci’s husband Giovanni Russo. At present, Li Galli’s flag, a canary-yellow ‘G’ set in a sky-blue background, flutters from the couple’s Venetian terrace.
After the COVID-19 pandemic compelled the Belief to finish its work sponsoring efficiency artwork, Fiorucci turned her focus to museum patronage for a couple of years. Her basis supported the launch of the primary up to date artwork program at Pompeii, referred to as Pompeii Dedication: Archaeological Issues—the place, in 2023, the artist Sissel Tolaas created an paintings that bottled the molecular scent of archaeological ruins—and Serpentine’s 2022 set up of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s “interspecies paintings” Pollinator Pathmaker at Kensington Gardens in London.
“I’m adventurous in my tastes, so by definition I’m uncovered to new issues,” she defined. “And as a non-public patron, I can take dangers.”
Her method to amassing has developed through the years. “I’m extra cool-headed now!” she admitted. “I was extra emotional in my selections. That’s as a result of artwork is a privilege; it’s a pleasure; it’s one thing that provides pleasure to your life. My assortment is an asset, and so I’m extra conscious of worth now. Simply because I fall in love with an paintings doesn’t imply I’ve to chew.”
Fiorucci does, nevertheless, make some extent of working with artists who aren’t already very well-known, as a result of she desires “to develop with them.” That’s a part of the aim of her new venture in Venice below the Belief’s new banner of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Basis, her non-profit arts group.
In December 2024, she bought a Fifteenth-century dwelling that used to belong to the painter Ettore Tito within the metropolis’s Dorsoduro neighborhood. A month later, the Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili moved in to create a site-specific work for the location’s inaugural present, ‘to like and devour’ (2025). Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the present additionally consists of works by invited artists resembling Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Zurab Astakhishvili, and Thea Djordjadze.
“I went from supporting artists on a distant island with an lively volcano to essentially the most related metropolis on the planet!” Fiorucci laughed. “Being in the course of Venice and having the possibility to precise your self and dominate an area is a superb alternative for an artist.”
With the Basis, Fiorucci plans to proceed the Belief’s mission of selling unconventional media in artwork and advises collectors to maneuver away from extra conventional selections. “We’re all shopping for work now as a result of we love work, as a result of it’s a protected alternative, as a result of we all know tips on how to dangle them and retailer them,” she advised Artsy. “However I feel artwork is producing so many significant works in unconventional media, and it’s necessary to not lose this type of expression.”
