Media: Las Provincias
Original title: El jardín que se lee como un museo
Author: Jorge Alacid
Date: 17th May 2025
The garden that reads like a museum
Todolí’s double masterpiece. The former director of IVAM meditates in a recent publication on the relationship between nature and the human being and the transformative power of art.
Final page of ‘Quisiera crear un jardín (y verlo crecer)’. Last line of text: ‘What is a garden if not a self-portrait’. The phrase born of the inspiration of Vicente Todolí, a prestigious personality on the Valencian, Spanish and international art scene, embodies the main attribute of the book that has just been published by Espasa: a writing in which autobiographical introspection beats, but at the service of a higher order reflection on the relationship of human beings with nature, an activity based on his walks and meditations among the fabulous arsenal of citrus trees that he tends in his garden in Palmera. The book, a very pleasant read, contains important messages, the most important of which is to understand that at the heart of every artistic discipline lies what he understands to be a marvellous uselessness: the serious is light and the apparently light nevertheless detonates a transforming message, which Todolí materialises with extreme naturalness through his own person, while he writes, talks and walks among orange and lemon trees and other creationist summits until he reaches the central conclusion, which serves both to understand his recently published work and his orchard: ‘This is like living inside a museum: an immersive experience’.
The ex-director of the IVAM brightens up with these kinds of reflections the walk through his property, nestled in a discreet corner of his native town, the heart of the Safor region. He seems happy and at the same time restless, unable to resist the old impulse, the prodigious streak that lives in his personality: that non-conformist character that led him to embark in his youth on a journey (an initiatory journey) from Valencia, where he was studying Art History, to the Venice that fascinated him so much and forever changed his outlook and also his identity. He tells it with great style in his book and explains it, at times self-absorbed, as he guides the walk through his garden, which this spring morning welcomes the bursting orange blossom and the sun filtering its rays through the leaves of the trees. Except for one case: a citrus tree called ‘Poncirus trifoliata? The only deciduous one.
It is one of the many rarities of rapturous beauty that Todolí shows the visitor, also filtering its own rays. He throws phrases into the air like very accurate darts, which make an impact on those who follow his steps and stop at the tables that mark the route. Each one of them offers a tasting of the citrus fruits that surround the spot; most of them, fruits unknown to the layman, which Todolí claims as a way of being in the world. Even as a way of being in history: he invites us to think of our civilisation as an adventure associated with the epic of these native crops.
Even as a way of being in History: it invites us to think of our civilisation as an adventure associated with the epic of these crops born in the foothills of the Himalayas millions of years ago and to travel with them to the convulsive crossroads that our culture is going through today. It is another journey, also an initiatory one, for those who take part with their cicerone in this sort of collective Epiphany in Palmera. One discovery after another, almost at every step: like the very personal and professional discovery that Todolí imprints on the pages of his book, which operates as a sort of travel guide, like the one housed in another famous garden: the garden of forking paths, imagined by Borges.
Indeed, walking through this enchanting enclave is equivalent to reviewing Todolí’s life and work, but at the same time the walker can take another itinerary and converse with the friendly nature that comes out to meet him at every step and, of course, take that third path that this book, whose reading is so moving, proposes. It is also a multiple exercise, because in its pages we see the adolescent Todolí, in a permanent state of observation, transformed into the audacious character he is becoming, with an enviable agenda of contacts (the world Gotha of contemporary art sleeps on his mobile) and a cosmopolitan personality who never denies (quite the contrary) his Valencian roots: That Todolí whose heart beats between Palmera and Vall de la Gallinera, the landscape devastated by a cruel fire that devastated his olive grove. The Todolí who emigrates to the United States, England, Portugal… The destinies that forge his personality, wise and curious. The Todolí who was decisive in the birth of the IVAM, the one who remembers with affection those who shared his projects with him halfway around the world, with a special dedication to his countrymen: the Llorens, Alborch and Alfato, to whom he pays tribute in the most moving pages of his book. Todolí is critical of the drift of certain aspects of current art (his chapter on encyclopaedic museums is illustrative) and dissatisfied with the evolution of architecture as a branch of the ‘star system’, from which he saves David Chipperfield, by the way?
And Todolí, finally, with a calm tone, who speaks between murmurs and often allows himself a touch of irony, that gentle Valencian sly humour. Reading him when the journey through his garden is so recent gives new life to his writings, which are savoured like this fruit he calls Adam’s bite, subtle poetry in a sweet mouthful. The velvety citrus fruits that he caresses with his hand as he crosses the Umbracle or his brief citron grove and points to the citrus fruits of beautiful nomenclature and exquisite stamps: the purple Buddha’s hand, the enigmatic flying dragon… Or those that arrived from far-off Australia and contain a revealing lesson: Valencia, as a great land that is welcoming to nature and also to humidity. And an additional lesson: every garden is a biography. And of course a self-portrait.
