EXHIBITION: Elena Salvini Pierallini: Other Gardens

Book art and nature photography by Florentine artist ‘ESP’ at Il Palmerino from 12 June to 21 September 2026

In the 1980s, Florentine photographer and book artist Elena Salvini Pierallini (1934–2024) began creating her Libri in Piedi (books on their feet) series, but her art experience started much earlier, at the age of 17, when she was tasked with crafting designs for her mother’s embroidery business. In the years that followed, ESP became a master of her own needlework – from medieval motifs to more contemporary textile works, with the ‘stitching together’ of images she found or captured via her own camera lens. This unique exhibition hosts various highlights from ESP’s career, from her ‘Murabili’ still-life series, to her sculpture-like art books, which provide a unique mosaic-like view of the wonders of the natural world.

Elena Salvini Pierallini – ESP, Mare d’Inverno (The Sea in Winter), 2013

“My mother was a person of great vitality, who vivified everything around her,” says Beatrice Pierallini, in an interview for Restoration Conversations magazine. “ESP wanted to give books the dignity of standing upright like human beings; she wanted them to be able to ‘walk’. In her mind, every object has its own life experience and personalised memories. She worked with collage, using images from magazine clippings she collected in sets, with topics like ‘people reading’, ‘frogs’ and ‘hands’. She’d combine these clippings with her own photography or pieces of found objects she liked, and then, used thread, as a unifying force in her work. In her mind, art was a visual experience; she associated analogous forms and shapes to create a visual story, a narrative, that did not need to be explained or theorized.”

“As an artist, Elena Salvini Pierallini, ESP, was interested in construction, never destruction. Her work was not an act of denouncement, or a criticism of society,” adds Sibilla Pierallini, also a curator of the show. “She had an absolute respect for animals and the natural world, and they feature predominantly in her work no matter the medium. On some level, her oeuvre is Matisse-like, in that she focused on building an alternative reality made in the image and likeness of her own desires.”

Elena Salvini Pierallini, From the ‘Murabile’ wall series, Still Life with Onions and Bananas, detail, 1995, ph. ESP

The exhibition ‘Elena Salvini Pierallini: Other Gardens’ at Il Palmerino Cultural Association is co-curated by Giovanna Giusti and Beatrice and Sibilla Pierallini. The show is organised as part of ‘The Garden Project’ conceived and sponsored by Il Palmerino and the Calliope Arts Foundation, in collaboration with The British Institute of Florence. This exhibition and its related events also form part of the Estate Fiorentina initiative, thanks to support from the Municipality of Florence.

For more on Sibilla and Beatrice Pierallini’s interview on their artist mother:

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