Inge Höher
Boboli in the Artist's Eye. Florentine paintings
Inge Höher's exhibition. Boboli in the Artist's Eye. Florentine Paintings presents some of the painter's works inspired by the magnificent presence in the Boboli Gardens of art and nature, be it the ancient sculptures or the variations in colour of the bark of the plane tree in its seasonal mutations or the different positions assumed by the great heron in flight above the hedges.
It is a space that the artist considers to be a kind of happy island, where she can find quiet to think and devise new paintings, especially measuring herself against the atmospheres of nature outdoors: she who for most of her career had favoured indoor settings. She had been educated in this sense at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts by Berhard Doerries, a painter who was highly regarded internationally, especially for his still life subjects or his d'après inspired by Piero della Francesca's frescoes in Arezzo, which he reproduced in large paintings during his stays in Italy.
For a long time Inge Höher favoured the theme of the window as a threshold and junction between inside and outside, an element of dialogue between immobile subjects, such as furniture, and nature that changes with the passing of the seasons.
Painting en plein air in the Boboli Gardens, she arrives at a multi-sensorial vision of space and draws inspiration from the ancient statues, monumental inhabitants, the oasis of the Vasca dell'Isola as well as the living beings that inhabit that space: birds, plants, bushes, the large terracotta vases that house ancient lemon plants, the anemones in springtime or the scented laurel bushes.
Close Italian sojourns of a northern woman who made painting sessions in the garden of the Pitti Palace an affectionate habit. Today, her works have found their setting in the quiet, light-flooded, neoclassical Saloncino delle Statue in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna. From the large windows, the piazza, the city and a dialogue between inside and outside that is fitting as it takes place just a few steps away from the immense monumental park. Strolling through the Boboli Gardens was a must in the days of the Grand Tour, but even today the richness of the decor, natural and sculptural, the fountains, the Lorraine café at the top of the hill remain a must for tourists from everywhere. Painting helps one to introject one's surroundings in order to restore them together with one's own individual sensibility, and the energetic Inge Höher speaks willingly of her vision of the Garden as a regular guest who is able to rediscover the custom of those who permanently live in our city.
In addition to the considerations that each individual can make about the works they see, an exhibition such as this one invites the public to a necessary and broader reflection on the importance of monumental gardens as green lungs of the urban fabric to be preserved and protected on a par with the works of art they have inspired and continue to inspire.
"This is an exhibition - emphasises curator Simonella Condemi - that invites the viewer to a broader reflection on the importance of the lungs of natural assets such as the Boboli Gardens, assets that must be preserved and protected in the same way as the works of art that have always found their perfect inspiration there".
