Poets and artists of all ages have been inspired by stones. An exhibition at the Villa Medici in Rome

TheFrench Academy at Villa Medici in Rome presents the exhibition Stories of Stone, curated by Jean de Loisy and Sam Stourdzé, until January 14, 2024. On display are nearly two hundred works from more than seventy institutions, from the earth’s oldest mineral dating back 4.4 billion years to the latest mineral created by contemporary artist Agnieszka Kurant, Sentimentite. The exhibition takes in ten rooms and continues in the ancient cistern of Villa Medici, the apartments of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, and the Balthus atelier.

Poets and artists from all artistic eras have testified to the profound influences these stones have had on their creations. The great Surrealist writer Roger Caillois, whose collection of remarkable mineral specimens forms the prologue to this exhibition, described this insistent relationship this way, “More than once it occurred to me that it was appropriate to look at stones as a kind of poetry.” Accompanied by the writer’s prose, the exhibition aims to be a novel of this ongoing frequentation that reveals how these minerals occupy an intermediate position between the whim of nature and the work of art.

The suggestions that these stones have aroused in artists of all ages allow us to measure the extent to which our thoughts, our myths, our protests and sometimes even our anxieties have benefited from their proximity. There they converse together, beyond the contingencies of History, stones at the edges of paths and coveted crystals, votive stones, simple ruins or weapons of the weak to defend themselves against the powerful, objects of scientific study, of romantic contemplation. And among the Men, from megalithic societies to the great names of modernity, we find Auguste Rodin or Giuseppe Penone, Charlotte Perriand or Antonio Tempesta, Tatiana Trouvé or Facteur Cheval.

The exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of Van Cleef & Arpels. The set design is created by Piovenefabi.

For all info: www.villamedici.it

Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Image: Makapansgat pebble, red-brown diasperite (3 million years B.C.) Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand. Photo by Pieter Hugo.

Poets and artists of all ages have been inspired by stones. An exhibition at the Villa Medici in Rome

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