uscany, especially known for the beauty of its landscape and the vast historical and artistic heritage, which tells of the Etruscan times and medieval times, also reveals a contemporary spirit. Travelling between small towns and hills in the Chianti area, it is not difficult to come across sculptures that attract curiosity and leave one pleasantly surprised. A lot of contemporary art projects, in fact, have given birth to works and installations made by artists from all over the world.

The first time an interest was shown in contemporary art in the Chianti area was in 1959, when Count Guido Chigi Saracini wanted the park of his villa at Castelnuovo Berardenga to show artworks and sculptures which were, indeed, contemporary. The task was entrusted to Vico Consorti, and since then this artistic trend has grown in the area in terms of quantity and prestige.

Numerous artists of national and international renown have left traces of their passage, among whom we can mention George d'Almeida, Maro Gorki, and the versatile Leo Lionni at Radda in Chianti. Here, where he lived and worked until his death, you will find sculptures which represent the stunning and dream-like plants described in the Botanica Parallela, a book in which Lionni narrates a detailed imaginary plant ecosystem that is parallel to the real one. You can see his bronze Giraluna under the loggia of the Municipal Palace in Radda. This feeling for contemporary art, spread throughout the Chianti area, allows us to admire artworks by, for instance, Igor Mitoray, Fuad, Marcello Guasti and Valentino Moradei at Greve in Chianti.

One of the major contemporary art projects, which involved all of the Chianti municipalities, is Tusciaelecta, created in 1996 at Greve in Chianti with the aim of integrating heterogeneous artworks in the landscape and social fabric, in terms of type and aesthetic, which have in common a design in tune with the surrounding territory (www.tusciaelecta.org).