Lynn Chadwick (1914–2003) was one of the most important sculptors of his generation and one of the masters of mid-20th century British sculpture.
His talent first gained international recognition in 1952, when he was a member of the collective that introduced the new generation of British sculptors to the world at large in the Venice Biennale, where he was to receive the International Sculpture Award two editions later, in 1956.
Retrospective for two gardens, a project devised for the Museo del Giardino di Boboli and the Giardino Bardini, comprises a total of twenty-four sculptures spread out over the two parks, creating an itinerary designed to focus attention on the two sites' orographical, monumental and scenographic features.
The relationship between nature and artifice is the leitmotif underlying the creation of the Boboli Gardens, and the gradual integration of the two themes of garden architecture and sculpture reaches one of its loftiest peaks in this Medici palace park. The same leitmotif is also found in the Giardino Bardini, which acquired its present form in the early 19th century and in which different styles and cultural approaches to garden architecture, ranging from the Romantic to the Chinese Garden, sit harmoniously with the garden's original calling as a fruit orchard.
The hybridisation of subjects designed to evoke a naturalistic concept of representation, typical of Lynn Chadwick's art, melds seamlessly with the natural artifice of the display of nature in the two gardens. Elements of fauna of metamophic aspect combined with a careful selection of flora constantly hark back to a rapport with a concept of totally controlled art, in which nature is tamed and dominated by man.