Peter Buch, Jardí de Peter / Peter's Garden

pictures are screenshots from the video by
Sergio Flaquer Carreras (Serflac) see documentation

 

Rather far away from the urban bustle, Peter's garden is situated on a dead end road past the small community of Pobla de Benifassá in the mountainous interior of Castellón, Spain, some fifty kilometers from the coast.

Begun in 1991, this art environment has evolved in the course of the years into a major setting of paths and ponds, colorful sculptures and imaginative constructions.

the two-leveled dragon's house

Life and works

Born in Germany in 1938, Buch grew up during World War II and the post-war years. He was glad to leave school at age fourteen and go to work as a gardener. but having the desire to become an artist, he went to the art school in Stuttgart. This proved unsuccessful, he was regarded as undisciplined and wasn't allowed to follow his own imagination.

mosaic decoration

So in 1960, at age 22, he left for Paris "to become a famous artist", a dream that wouldn't come true. He had to get by on small jobs and finally became a house painter. 

In 1964 he met a German young lady whom he would marry and with whom in 1967 he had a son. As so many young people would do these days, the couple traveled to Greece and Formentera, living there as hippies on a shoestring, enjoying beautiful, sunny areas.

In 1970 they finally settled on Formentera, where they lived in a simple, cheap house in the fields.

Buch, who all the while had continued making paintings, the next years had some expositions and succeeded in selling his art work. In the early eighties, apart form painting, he also began trying to work with materials such as wood, making sculptural creations.

Formentera gradually became too crowded to his sense and in 1985 Buch, who was divorced by now, visited Spain where he succeeded in finding a quite spot in the small community of Pobla de Benifassá.

With the money he had saved, he bought there a house, which he later substituted for another more quietly situated one at the outskirts of the village. He also bought a workshop and a large piece of land in a natural area just outside the village.

In the following years Buch would continue to stay in Paris and in Formentera, until in 2007 he settled permanently in Pobla de Benifassá.

Creating an art environment

In 1991 Buch began making creations to decorate the garden. He already had begun making sculptures, but now he also gave it a try to build structures.

He had no training in making constructions at all and his first creations collapsed. A friend introduced him to some principles of construction and so the site gradually became stocked with all kind of built structures such as a bar, pictured below, named la Papallana Felic, 

a high rising tower, pictured below, with a platform on top,

but also various monumental structures of people, such as the pregnant woman below,

structure representing a pregnant woman

and also a lot of stand-alone sculptures.

Along paths and ponds, often inlaid with mosaics, visitors can walk through the garden and eventually rest on decorated benches.

Buch can not be seen as a self-taught artist, neither does he belong to or is he interested in the world of mainstream art. In France and Italy he probably would be seen as belonging to the field of art singulier. 

He is familiar with the work of outsider artists such as Picassiette and facteur Cheval, and feels inspired by such creations as Bomarzo and the Tarot Garden.

Visitors are welcome. They are asked to pay a small donation Buch will use to buy materials to maintain the garden and make new creations.

The built structures have been made without any permit from the local authorities, which up to now has not yielded any problem. Indeed, it is not impossible the authorities see the garden's potential to attract tourists, which would contribute to the local economy.

Peter Buch's garden is probably the most extensive and comprehensive (outsider) art environment in Spain. In this regard it is significant that Trip Advisor's website mentions Peter's garden and has some positive reviews.

Situation in 2021

The picture above and the one below, made in December 2021 by Tiramisu Bootfighter, who traveled through Spain in the context of his project La Valise, Galerie Ambulante, show that the site at that time still was in good condition.

Documentation

* Peter Buch's website

* The garden got a scholarly review in: Jo Farb Hernandez, Singular Spaces. From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments, p. 336-351. Seattle (Raw Vision, SPACES, San José State University), 2013. ISBN 978-0-615-78565-3. An abridged version on SPACES website (added 2013). See also (a part of) her article about Peter Buch on Raw Vision (Spring 2022)

Videos

* The video South Spain Trip by Serflac (YouTube, March 2020) has scenes of the site, starts at 47'18"
* Video by Claus J. Barteczko (in two parts, 8'21" and  7'42", YouTube, uploaded January 2010)

part 1

part 2

first published March 2014, last revised April 2023

Peter Buch

Jardi de Peter

Pobla de Benifassá, Castellón, Valencia, Spain

visitors welcome

Kazimieras Peciukevicius, Auberge aux bois sculptés / The inn with sculpted wood

/

sculpture of Saint Jacques, installed in 2011

pictures courtesy of Dominique Clement

From old a halt on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, Joncels is a medieval village of some 250 inhabitants in the Hérault department in southern France. Just outside the ramparts, in former centuries there was an inn where travelers could stay when the gates were closed at night.

An inn with a large collection of wooden sculptures

This house, dating from the 16th century, since 2002 once more became a hotel, named Villa Issiates, an auberge that warmly welcomes those travelers who are walking to Santiago de Compostela.

Run by Giedre and Alain Ivinskas this hotel has a very special ambiance because of the many wooden sculptures displayed at the premises or added to the exterior walls..

Life and works

These creations have been made by Kazimieras Peciukevicius (b. 1928), who is the father of Giedre.

Born in Lithuania. he is a descendant of a Jewish Polish-Lithuanian family that in the 19th century migrated to the United States, but before World War II returned to Lithuania when they had inherited a large farm in that country. 

In the 19th century Lithuania was part of the Russian Empire, until in 1918 it regained its independence. In 1940, during the second world war,  the country was occupied first by the Soviet Union, subsequently by the Germans and then in 1944 once more by the Soviet Union.

As a counter force against the Soviet-Russian occupation a strong partisan movement emerged, uniformed, operating in smaller and larger units, with the large forests as a shelter. 

Vigorously pursued, most partisans would make use of the amnesty following Stalin's death in 1953, although some groups continued their activities up in the 1980s.

March 1990 Lithuania finally became an independent nation.

Peciukevicius, who was in his twentieth after world war II, joined the partisans and so he spent a large part of his young life in the forests.

This may have influenced his later creative work, just as he also has experienced influences from Polish, Russian and Lithuanian culture.

After he had participated in the partisan movement Peciukevicius had a large variety of jobs and at some moment he became the owner of the house in Joncels, that nowadays is the hotel Villa Issiates, run by his daughter and son-in-law.

Peciukevicius became a gifted self-taught creator of wooden sculptures which embellish the property in large numbers, calling an atmosphere of another world, a world perhaps of gnomes and woodland spirits one supposes present in dense forests....

He likes to stay with his daughter and son-in-law during the months in autumn and winter when the hotel is closed. For him a nice period to make new creations.

Documentation
* Website of the hotel
* Weblog Herault Insolite
* Article (May 2011) in regional journal Midi Libre
* Article, with a lot of photos, on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit
* Article on Facebook (February 24, 2023) b Sonia Terhzaz about a visit she paid in 2021 to the site

Video
* Scenes of the site on the South France trip video by Serflac (YouTube, starts at 31.02, cannot be embedded here)

Kazimieras Peciukevicius

Auberge aux bois sculptés
Rue du Plô
34650 Joncels, dept Hérault, region Occitanie, France
open to the public