Tuscany Artists Gardens

A companion volume to Tuscany Artists Homes, Tuscany Artists Gardens presents thirty gardens created by contemporary artists who have settled in Tuscany, and who have applied their artistic sensitivities to their surroundings in unusual and distinctive ways. Each artist’s work reflects, even if unconsciously, a continuity with Tuscan traditions while bringing to bear their own cultural heritage and artistic vision. The gardens take many different forms, from majestic, formally designed acres punctuated with sculpture to tiny, intimate spaces that have colors of every imaginable hue. Daniel Spoerri has used the landscape as a dramatic backdrop for great new works of art scattered along a botanic trail. Niki de Saint Phalle’s extraordinary Tarot Garden houses twenty-two polychromatic sculptures representing the major arcana of the Tarot, while in Fernando Botero’s Garden for the Goddess of Fertility, monumental bronze figures loom out of the trees. Mariella Sgaravatti’s essays offer telling insights into the artists’ motivations, and explore the ways in which their work is intrinsically connected to the magical beauty of the Tuscan landscape. The descriptions and images of the gardens found in this volume are a useful and original source of inspiration for anyone working in the field.