To step into Audrey and Martin Gruss’s home in Palm Beach is to enter grace. Here, the stone is natural beige; the halls echo with sounds of water; and the details of craftsmanship bear the hands of the legion of artisans who brought the couple’s Italian Renaissance vision to life. Serving as both counterpoint and complement is the art. Their expansive collection, which ranges from Anish Kapoor to Lee Krasner, is a collaboration with the art advisor Kim Heirston. She recently sat down with Audrey, a guiding philanthropist and founder of the Hope for Depression Research Foundation, to speak about her life’s work and her tireless pursuit of beauty in design.
KIM HEIRSTON: How did you come to own a home in Palm Beach?
AUDREY GRUSS: My husband and I came to the Palm Beach area in 1986, because we were both equestrians and wanted to check out the Palm Beach Polo Club. We rented there first, then bought a turnkey home, and ultimately built in the Polo Club when Martin started a high-goal polo team. We found that we were going to Palm Beach all the time, especially to black-tie events. We made many friends in Palm Beach through the polo world, and bought a house there in 1990.
KH: What was the inspiration behind your home?
AG: We loved Palm Beach so much and always enjoyed our winters here, so we decided to build on a perfect piece of land in 1997. Villa Delfino was designed by exterior architect James Carmo of Bridges, Marsh & Associates. We wanted a house that was pure Italian Renaissance, not a pastiche of French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Moroccan, etc. We hired Toni Facella Sensi, a leading interior architect and designer in Rome, to give us pure Italianate details in the interior design aspect as well. The house was finished in 2000 and we turned to Palm Beach interior designer and friend Scott Snyder a few years ago to refresh the upstairs bedrooms and other rooms in the house. The house reflects a combination of old and new, both in its interior design and in our collection of art. We love the traditional details of the overdoors, columns, crown moldings, and ceilings, so we also placed some of our Old Master art collection in the living room: four Vanvitelli paintings of scenes of Rome, Piazza Navona, the Colosseum, the Vatican, and Piazza del Popolo. A Panini hangs over the fireplace.
KH: The house is called Villa Delfino. Where does the name come from?
AG: It means the Dolphin Villa, because dolphins have historically always been a symbol of warmth and welcome. The Villa Delfino symbol consists of two entwined Regency dolphins, with a shell on top. It is on the outside front door and sets the tone for objects and accessories that are “of the sea.” The house is situated with the front facing the ocean and the back facing the inland waterway, and that gave us the idea of collecting objects that were inspired by water. One of the first objects we purchased and found in London were a pair of 18th-century “hippocampi.” They are beautiful terracotta dolphins that function as vases. We have them in the exterior entrance hall filled with yellow Oncidium orchids.
KH: And that theme continues throughout the house.
AG: Yes. In the main entrance hall, a Regency mirror depicts two mermen at the bottom, with a dolphin on either side of Neptune at the top of the mirror. Next to it is a beautiful Jean-Michel Othoniel sculpture of silver and mauve glass balls.
KH: Do you have a favorite room?
AG: Martin and I have always wanted something of a grotto feeling in the house. We were thrilled when our designer came up with the concept of an entire dining room in shells. Martin and I were walking down Via del Babuino in Rome, and we couldn’t believe we saw these 17th-century Dutch paintings that showed collections of shells. They’re now in the dining room.
KH: Your collection spans from Old Masters to contemporary art.
AG: We’ve collected contemporary art because, as I’ve mentioned, we love that combination of old and new, and the energy it brings to any environment. It is a unifying design principle of both the house and the furniture and accessories that we have collected over the years. Contemporary art resides alongside Italian antiques and objects.
KH: Do you remember the first work we acquired together? It was the beautiful “Brown Glow,” by Adolph Gottlieb at Art Basel Miami in 2007.
AG: That’s right. And it shows how well we worked together.
KH: The funny thing was that our advisory had already put a reserve on that painting, because we had loved it so much. And then you and Martin stumbled upon it. We were in perfect sync. The same sort of coup de foudre happened with your 1962 Twombly and 1957 Mitchell. I call it Art Kismet!
AG: Agreed.
KH: The Pistoletto room is, in some ways, the nucleus of Villa Delfino. At one point, we were going to focus only on contemporary Italian artists. Then we had to open it up a bit. However, it’s in the atrium that everything comes together: Italy, past and present. The palette and mirrored surfaces unite everything.
AG: Yes, in the atrium is the exceptional contemporary Pistoletto diptych, “Two Less One Colored.” One panel features Neapolitan yellow pigment, the other, Mediterranean blue, with a broken mirror and framed in a classical gold frame—a prime example of old and new working together beautifully. The atrium has handmade blue and yellow ceramic tiles on the walls from Sicily that show birds that are surrounded by grapes and greenery. There are also antique 19th-century terracotta urns and a pair of niches. At the end of the gallery,
there is a life-size 1st-century Roman statue, depicting a woman draped in her toga.
KH: Your 1962 Frankenthaler, “Hommage À M.L.” (referring to the late 19th-century Parisian avant-garde painter, Marie Laurencin), in your main bedroom is one of my favorite art moments, ever. With its soft palette, it felt as though the painting had been commissioned for the space. What is it like to wake up to this Frankenthaler every morning?
AG: Heaven!
Read the complete story in PALMER Vol. 4, available for purchase here.
