Artist’s Studio
Twice a month, Hotel Eden becomes the home of illustrator Andrea Ferolla, who draws inspiration from the hotel and its guests for his creations
There is a place in Rome where art and hospitality converge. It is the Hotel Eden, an elegant gem just steps away from Piazza di Spagna and Villa Borghese. This Dorchester Collection Hotel, which has been welcoming royal family members and celebrities since 1889, has recently inaugurated Artist in Residence, a project which transforms the hotel’s spaces into an artist’s studio. The goal is to be increasingly recognized as a place that generates culture.
Hotel Eden has chosen as its first Artist in Residence Andrea Ferolla, an internationally-renowned illustrator and creative director (his works are on show at London’s Fashion Illustration Gallery), who describes a chic and timeless world, populated by sophisticated characters and icons of the Italian style, in his unmistakably elegant style. Twice a month, the hotel will become his studio: the illustrator will capture the hotel’s spirit by observing the staff’s discreet gestures and the guests’ sophisticated charm.
“Hotel Eden is a perfect theatre, full of leading actors and actresses and walk-ons - Ferolla explains-. I am the audience. I am attracted to the characters wearing the most iconic ‘costumes’: the doorman, the bellboy, the barman, the waitresses with their flapping aprons. I draw inspiration from what I see- he goes on- and I draw what I ‘feel’, by representing the world as a theatre where life takes the stage, with its dramas and comedies. As for the subjects of my drawings, there is always a gesture, a posture, a glance that captures my attention”. And talking about the Eternal City, he says: “Rome, because of its millenary history, is very ‘theatrical’ in its self-representation. It is no chance that I have my studio here. And for those coming to Rome, the experience of travel inevitably coincides with the experience of art. Hotel Eden, by housing my studio, carries on the tradition of a hotel historically associated with art and artists.”