“Land really is the best art”. It's curious to think that such a quote comes from the king of Pop Art himself, Andy Warhol. Yet his passion for the natural world has never been a secret: Warhol produced around 10,000 pictures of flowers during his career.
10 stunning land art sites in Italy
From Burri’s emblematic Cretto to the sculptures immersed in the nature of Pollino National Park. A selection of Land Art sites to visit in Italy to lose yourself among artworks and landscape.
Image: Arne Quinze, Mountain Trabucco, photo Giacomo Bianchi
Image: Edoardo Tresoldi, Opera © Roberto Conte
Image: Xinge Zhang & Jiaqi Qiu, Fragile as a Rainbow, 2021, Location: Chi Jus, Longiarù, San Martino in Badia (BZ), Credits: Gustav Willeit – www.guworld.com
Image: Richard Serra, “Open Field Vertical Elevations”, 1982, stone (Colombino di Firenzuola), Courtesy: Collezione Gori - Fattoria di Celle
Image: DanGraham, Bisected Two-way Mirror Triangle, photo Archivio CarniaMusei - Glass Pavillon
Image: Mauro Staccioli, Portal 2009, corten steel, 1000x805x55 cm, ©Sergio Borghesi, Courtesy Mauro Staccioli Archive
Image: Rainbow Crash, Federica Marangoni - Italy, Chianti Sculpture Park
Image: Francesco Labita, Unsplash
Image: Peppe Occhipinti, unsplash, Labyrinth of arianna fiumara d'arte, Castel di Lucio, Messina, Italy
Image Credits Arte Pollino
View Article details
- Clara Rodorigo
- 12 May 2022
But it is not just that. The Pop Art movement emerged in the same years as the so-called land art; the years of body art, conceptual art, and Italian arte povera. These were the 1960s, the post-World War II era. The state lost its authority, its credibility vacillated and even art, driven by a new, provocative force, less disruptive but more profound, was seeking to transcend the limits of museum walls and the aseptic environment of galleries.
Land art was born in the United States between 1967 and 1968. It aimed for a new, closer relationship between art and life, fuelled by the desire to create a different idea of society and consequently a different, more accessible, idea of art that reflected it.
Because of the differences between practices and typologies of interventions it embraces, it is difficult to consider land art a movement. Close in its reflections and language to conceptual art, land art rather represents a different way of conceiving works, their relationship with the space they inhabit and with us, who alter that same space and become part of it. The artist intervenes directly on nature and land, going beyond the physical and metaphorical limits of the artist's studio and exhibition space.
Italy, a land of endless and evocative natural landscapes, boasts some of the most beautiful land art sites in the world. Parks, forests and seafront promontories. Installations and site-specific sculptures blend into the landscape, almost becoming a distinctive feature of it.
The selection in our gallery offers a glimpse of what happens when land, defined by Warhol as "the best art", meets art itself and embraces it, taking care of it.
Opening image: Mauro Staccioli, Primi passi 2009, corten steel, 805x1300x40 cm, ©Sergio Borghesi, Courtesy Mauro Staccioli Archive
Arte Sella: the contemporary Mountain is a cultural association and social enterprise founded in 1986, when a group of friends from Borgo Valsugana, in Trentino, realised their aspiration of combining contemporary art and nature. From the first exhibitions held in the garden of Villa Strobele, the association has grown over the years, and today boasts a qualified staff, a network of partners, and above all collaborations with over 300 artists, who have resulted in three evocative exhibition paths.
"Opera" is the stunning permanent public installation by acclaimed Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi on the Reggio Calabria seafront, promoted and commissioned by the Municipality and the Metropolitan City. Inaugurated in 2020, "Opera" merges with the landscape with an open architecture composed of a colonnade of 46 columns reaching 8 metres in height within a 2,500 square metre park. A true "monument to contemplation" that uses the classical architectural style and the transparency of Absent Matter "to celebrate the contemplative relationship between the place and the human being".
SMACH. is a land art project in San Martino in Badia, South Tyrol, launched in 2012, which consists of a Biennial, an Art Park and collateral events. The works of art have been created to blend in with the magical setting of the Dolomites. The aim is to increase the public's interest in nature, art and their interaction, enhancing the landscape in which the works are located. The Art Park houses a permanent exhibition of land-art sculptures acquired during the last editions of the SMACH Biennial.
The Fattoria di Celle is a historic complex and 15th-century villa in Santomato, Pistoia. Since the second half of the 20th century it houses the Gori Collection of contemporary art. The park, at the back of the villa, was designed in 1844 by Giovanni Gambini and looks like a wide English garden with the romantic style of European gardens. The collection now boasts 80 works of environmental art created by artists from all over the world, most of them immersed in nature. In addition to being an open-air museum, Villa Celle is also a nature reserve.
The Art Park in Verzegnis is a contemporary art park that is part of the Carnia Musei network. It is an open-air museum, the brainchild of Egidio Marzona, an atypical collector who has gone beyond the canons of art collecting and expanded the concept itself. In 1989 Marzona invited some of the most interesting contemporary artists to create works for his park, giving the artists the freedom to decide how to intervene and what relationship to establish with the surrounding landscape. Today these works are flanked by posthumous acquisitions that can be admired while wandering through the green.
In the countryside surrounding Volterra, Mauro Staccioli's large sculptures catch the eye, integrating perfectly, in form and colour, with the surrounding landscape. The artist was born and raised here, and this bond emerges loud and clear in his evocative sculptures, which tell of the relationship between art and nature, between nature and life. An itinerary of sculpture-interventions resulting from an exhibition held in various locations in Volterra, entitled "Mauro Staccioli. Volterra 1972-2009", which took place in 2009.
Chianti Sculpture Park is a permanent exhibition of contemporary art installations and sculptures that celebrate the relationship between art and nature through the combination of sculptures, woods, sounds, colours and light. The site-specific works were conceived by the artists, coming from all over the world, following on-site investigations in the area, which is the fulcrum of the project. The park also hosts some works from the Pievasciata B.A.C. Borgo d'Arte Contemporanea project. An amphitheatre has been specially created to present a full programme of concerts in July and August.
Burri's Cretto is a world-famous work of environmental art, created by Alberto Burri between 1984 and 1989 where the old town of Gibellina stood, when it was destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake. Also known as the 'Grande Cretto', the monument covers an area of about 80,000 square metres and traces the alleys and streets of the old town. The ruins of the buildings destroyed by the earthquake are cemented into the monument itself.
Fiumara d'Arte is an open-air museum presenting the works of twelve contemporary artists along the banks of the Tusa river. The project was born in 1982 from an idea of the collector Antonio Presti, who approached the sculptor Pietro Consagra to dedicate a monument to the memory of his father. The unveiling of the sculpture marked the announcement of the opening of the open-air museum, a project that from the outset has sought to promote dialogue between art and nature, and has transformed the area along the fiumara into a park of sculptures by internationally renowned artists.
The ArtePollino association was founded in 2008 with the aim of promoting cultural growth in the Pollino National Park, in Basilicata, by encouraging all kinds of artistic expression, especially contemporary. Through the involvement of local communities, schools, cultural associations and businesses, ArtePollino supports and encourages participation and sharing through a 'slow and collective' immersion in the landscape. With the Ka Art programme, ArtePollino was among the 27 project leaders of the cultural programme of Matera 2019 European Capital of Culture.