Hidetoshi Nagasawa (Tonei, 1940 – Ponderano, 2018)
The Nagasawa and Gori families had already formed a warm friendship when Hidetoshi was invited to Celle in the mid-1990s to create a site-specific artwork. In a small clearing near the lake, he conceived the idea of building a sort of “marble garden”, one that could evoke the natural poetics of Zen landscapes. The profound conversation about the experiential meaning of the garden led Giuliano Gori to involve Hidetoshi Nagasawa in another project he was developing at the same time: the Dialysis Pavilion at the Ospedale del Ceppo in Pistoia. Here, in collaboration with the architect, the artist intervened in the building’s central interstices, open to the sky, to create The Gardens of the Self. Composed of vibrant green moss, rough stones, and finely colored marble, they were designed to delight patients in therapy who could enjoy the view of this bright green space through the glass walls of the treatment hall.
