Graziella, 2025

55 cm (h)

Portrait of Graziella Belli, director of the Giardino Botanico André Heller in Gardone Riviera, Lake Garda. Commissioned by Hans and Jovanka Porsche to celebrate Graziella’s extraordinary contribution to the garden. After approving the portrait of Graziella, which I sculpted from life, Hans and Jovanka gave me the creative freedom to evolve the work to realise their vision. I chose to honour Graziella as the guardian of the garden — both protector of its sculptures and 500+ species of plants.

The incised drawings echo sculptures in the garden by André Heller, Dashi Namdakov, Keith Haring, Atelier Van Lieshout, Roy Lichtenstein, Rudolf Hirt and Edgar Tezak, and this mark-making was inspired by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s 1913 sculpture of Horace Brodzky. Other works I drew inspiration from include a black-figure Etruscan hydria made in Cerveteri circa 525 BC, attributed to the Eagle Painter; a late 14th- to early 15th-century Madonna della Misericordia in the Bargello; and René Magritte's Man in the Bowler Hat, 1964.