Out of town: Fattoria di Celle, the museum park of the Gori collection
About 50 minutes by car
from Florence, in Santomato in Pistoia, is the Fattoria di Celle, a villa with a museum park that houses the Gori
collection.
Since the second half of
the twentieth century, in fact, the property has been open to the public, with
guided tours by reservation that are held from May to September, during which
you can admire the 80 works of
environmental art scattered throughout the estate.
The park in which the
works are located was designed starting from 1844 by Giovanni Gambini according
to the romantic taste of European gardens, so we can find architecture of
various types, such as an aviary, a neo-Gothic pavilion, a neo-Egyptian style
monument and an icehouse. The land is crossed by
the Brana stream, used by some artists for their works and used for the
creation of a lake.
The entrepreneur from
Prato, Giuliano Gori, dissatisfied with the traditional way in which works of
art were exhibited, was inspired by the National Museum of Art of Catalonia in
Barcelona and the installations seen at documenta Kassel and the Venice
Biennale to begin designing his museum park.
He called artists from
all over the world, who lived at the villa for a long time, exchanging ideas
and creating the works to be included in the park.
In 1981 he set up a
commission composed of Renato Barilli, Francesco Gurrieri, Amnon Barzel, Knud
Jensen and Manfred Schneckenburger, with which it was decided that the artists
had to follow a regulation that protected both the environment and the works:
the site-specific works had to integrate with nature, whose conformation would
not be altered to accommodate them. Each artist chose the place within the park
where to insert their work, which had to be made of durable materials in order
to survive the atmospheric conditions.
The first installations
were inaugurated on June 12, 1982, among them were works by Robert Morris,
Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, Mauro Staccioli, George Trakas, Alice Aycock,
Dani Karavan, Anne and Patrick Poirier and Ulrich Rückriem.
The activity of Gori and
the artists continued until recent times with the installation of the latest
works in 2022. The complex represents
one of the most important examples of Land Art in Italy. Absolutely worth a
visit!
