If there is a plateau that continuously unites Hans Dieter Schaal's numerous artistic fields of activity, a kind of fundamental level, then it is surely that of landscape architecture. Landscape motifs are as convincingly present in his stage sets as they are in his installations, his exhibition architectures, his texts, and, naturally, also his park and garden designs.
Schaal has been on the track of the fascination of landscapes since the 1960s. For him, encountering the parterre or 'carpet patterns' of the baroque Herrenhauser Garten in Hannover was a key experience. This was followed by an intensive study of the early landscape gardens of Great Britain, the park complexes of the Romantics and the Enlightenment in Weimar, Woerlitz, and Muskau, and by studies of the garden-art ideas and philosophical implications that underpinned each of them. As a twice-over 'artist-in-residence' at the Villa Massimo in Rome, Schaal was also able to absorb the whole cosmos of Italian garden and park planning, from the Renaissance to the present day.
