Double Heart, Gaetano Pesce‘s final sculpture, is quintessentially him: cheeky, tender, and impossible to ignore. The work—late artist’s only permanent public installation in the States—is composed of two cushiony hearts pierced by Cupid’s arrow, and casts a warm glow over Boston at night.
The interlocking orbs hover above the Massachusetts Turnpike at the new Lyrik Back Bay, an open-air plaza conceived by the work’s commissioners, developer Samuels & Associates and art advisory Goodman Taft. “The journey to create this monumental sculpture was our final project together and one that was so important to him,” says gallerist Lucy Chadwick of Champ Lacombe, who oversaw the work’s production, even after Pesce passed in early 2024. “He wanted to access a public dialogue in a permanent and resonating capacity.”
Born in northern Italy and a New Yorker from 1983 onward, Pesce derided design that he felt lacked an element of human touch. Instead, he melded 20th-century modernism with a playful eye, showing at the Venice Biennale, Louvre, and MoMA. He crossed boundaries of design and architecture, cobbling a Candyland pathway of resin-dipped chairs for Bottega Veneta’s Spring/Summer 2023 show. When asked to create an installation for the Aspen Art Museum in 2022, he recoiled at the building’s wooden lattice façade, opting to obscure it with inflatable mountains.
“His philosophy sits, intentionally, in contrast with the repetitive, geometric grids of the International Style,” says curator Stella Bottai, who worked with Pesce on the Aspen project.
In Back Bay—the Boston neighborhood where this final installation resides—Pesce’s sculptural flight of fancy presides over historic Victorian brownstones and boutiques. At nearly 30 feet tall, Double Heart is also intended to symbolize the interconnectedness of the city’s inhabitants.
“This sculpture has the function of making people think about the importance of love … and of reconnecting with others,” Pesce reflected before his death. “I believe that the treasure of the world is diversity. If we are the same, we cannot talk, because there is nothing to say. But if you and I are different, there’s a lot to exchange.”
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