François Alix, Magic Hortus

this image and the next four (2024)
courtesy of the editors of the website tipeek photos 

In Foreil, a small hamlet that is part of the commune of Verrue in the department Vienne, France, there is a forest called Scévolles.

In this rural and wooded area François Alix in 2018 started to create his art environment Magic Hortus.

Life and works

François Alix was born in 1964 in Chinon, a commune about 40 kilometers north of Verrue.

There is virtually no information available on the internet about his early years and education.

His life story begins with the report that he had gone to live in Switzerland, where he sold antiquarian books. He returned to France in 2018, when he was 54. Earlier, in 2010, he had bought the four-hectare site in Foreil.

Francois Alix moved into a house situated on the area he had bought in 2010. Pictures from that time show that this terrain provided space to store caravans and was covered with a variety of small stone structures. 

He came up with the idea of ​​beautifying this area by adding home-made decorations, and because around that time a pile of scrap metal had been dumped in the forest near the area, his first thought went to welding himself all sorts of metal flowers. And so he went to work with a hacksaw and a welding machine, producing small pieces of metal that were put together in all kinds of compositions.

For many years in this way he was active in creating a range of metal flowers, painted in all sorts of colours. With these flowers he could bring colour not only to his own life, but also to the lives of people who come to see his art environment.

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The sea of ​​flowers on the site, currently partly entwined with rusty foliage, also explains why it bears the name Magic Hortus.

The smaller metal creations also include a group of 365 sculptures of women who dance, spread out across the terrain.

There are also small metal creations in specific shapes that decorate fences situated in various places in the art environment.

And then, they are also used to decorate stand alone metal elements, such as the large round wheel, shown below and a metal bridge that covers kind of a a water feature surrounded by upright yellow colored side walls

Near this bridge rises a tall rusty metal tower, its top marked by a large amount of metal strings hanging down, all together a paraphrase on a tree. Such trees also adorn the site elsewhere.

François Alix’s favorite spot is the "high line" pictured below. It is a large, walkable metal structure, kind of a bridge, made from arches that came from a train station. From this bridge one has a beautiful view of the art environment.

Within the ensemble of iron and stone items that adorn the garden, the carefully placed gravestones occupy a special place, which could give the idea that this is an open-air mausoleum. 

However, the site is more a vast labyrinth or maze of interrelated metal and stone creations.

In March 2024 something completely unexpected happened. A representative of DREAL (Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing) came along, accompanied by a few police officers, to report that the site was considered an unlicensed iron waste heap that had to be cleared within a few months.

François Alix does not accept this and puts up a defense.

 

Documentation

* Article (May 2024) on the website of newspaper France Bleu Poitou

* Article (May 2024) on website Tipeek Photos

* Article (October 2021) in newspaper La Nouvelle République

Video

* Video (YouTube, 2024, 5'46'') 

Francois Alix

Magic Hortus,

along the D347

Hamlet of Foreil, municipality of Verrue, dept Vienne, region Normandy. France

can be visited

Google Streetview