Urban art

A flowering wall in Turin

A “botanical” mural welcomes visitors to the historic centre of Turin, celebrating nature and its curative power.

The work of art, entitled “Althaea officinalis L., is an urban promotion project developed using open-air art. The tall and narrow wall – at 10 Via Fratelli Calandra – is an 80 m2 canvas commissioned to world-famous Galician artist DOA OA by 24 ORE Cultura-Gruppo 24 ORE, with the sponsorship of the Unipol Group and in collaboration with the City of Turin.

DOA OA is a multidisciplinary Galician artist who uses walls for his paintings, often depicting deconstructed plant species.

The subject chosen by the artist for the city of Turin forms part of his "Reforesting" project. Reforesting was developed in 2014 with the aim of bringing forgotten spaces or abandoned walls back to life, immersing them in the poetry that often only nature – and art - manage to give these places, through an artistic interpretation of plant species that usually grow in the area in which the creative restoration occurs. The artist’s aim is twofold: to familiarise the viewer with medicinal plants and the way they have traditionally been used over the centuries as a form of phytotherapy, and to depict the beauty of the plant kingdom.