Interested in contemporary sculpture? Tuscany is a surprisingly furtile place for it! See how the shock of the new and surreal commune with the deep natural beauty of the Tuscan landscape. There are some fantastic sculpture gardens to explore near our farm house apartments on the Tuscany Untour. Here are our favorites.
Site Transitoire
Set off the small road between Leonina and Mucigliani (near Asciano), you will find this monumental sculpture by Jean Paul Philippe, a sort of 1990s stonehenge that inter-
acts strikingly with its natural setting. The installation was created in 1993 as a meditation on the transitory nature of home, with an outline that loosely resembles the footprint of a house, with sky large above. Gaze through the window into the dramatic views of the Crete. This is a striking sight, especially at sunset.
Daniel Spoerri Garden
The Fondazione di Giardino di Daniel Spoerri hosts this famous contemporary abstract artist’s installations among over 100 works. His make up fewer than half of the works, and the Swiss artist has hand selected the other installations you will find here and continues to add to the collection each year. Follow a flock of sculpted geese, look to the muses and towers, reconsider litter in bronze, or tread lightly through a sculpture that resembles an enormous wind chime. Some of the works in the garden are interactive, and the works tend to blend into their natural setting, some almost hidden in the landscape of the garden. The collection includes works by Eva Aeppli, J.R. Soto, and Luigi Mainolfi. Find the garden near Seggiano, in the Province of Grosseto.
Giardino dei Tarocchi
This colorful, whimsical garden in Garavicchio, near Capalbio, features the playful, surreal sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle, whose work you may already know from the fountain at the Beaubourg in Paris. Executed in 1979, the garden was inspired by the tarot, and the features over 20 enormous figures, covered in mosaic tiles and mirror. You can walk among these huge and colorful sculptures, looking for the Sun, the Moon, the Empress and other characters. Saint Phalle lived in one of them while she completed the gardens. The garden took two years to complete and is said to have been inspired by Gaudi’s Park Güell.