Camille Lesouef

Camille Lesouef is a doctor in art history and a research engineer at the MHA laboratory at the Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Grenoble. Her work focuses on the art of gardens in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. She is particularly interested in cultural transfers through the study of theories and models, and in the interrelation of garden art with the decorative arts, architecture and the visual arts.

This project aims to study the theoretical and visual construction of the giardino all’italiana model and its circulation in Europe between the 1890s and 1930s. It was during this period that the term ‘giardino all’italiana’ was popularised in Italian and foreign publications to designate the Italian private gardens designed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, regular and geometric villa gardens creating a harmony between art and nature, architecture and landscape. Focusing on the analysis of the role of publications and photographs in the invention, definition and diffusion of this model of garden, this project proposes to conduct a global investigation of this theme, in order to write a multipolar history of it, taking into account the way it was reciprocally constructed in Italy, the United States, Germany, England and France.