Key Takeaways
- Giuseppe Penone is a renowned Italian artist and sculptor.
- His large-scale sculptures of trees explore the relationship between man and nature.
- Penone's work incorporates natural materials like bronze and gold leaf.
- His exhibitions have featured approximately 80 pieces of his work.
- Penone is associated with the Arte Povera movement, which began in 1969
Giuseppe Penone (born 1947 in Garessio, Italy) is an Italian sculptor recognized for his large tree-inspired works. His art explores the connection between humans and nature and is linked to the Arte Povera movement. In 2014, he received the Praemium Imperiale. He currently lives and works in Turin, Italy.
Giuseppe Penone: Sculpting Nature, Time, and Memory
Giuseppe Penone (born April 3, 1947, in Garessio, Italy) is an Italian sculptor and artist, widely recognized for his large-scale tree sculptures. His work explores the deep relationship between humans and nature. In his early career, he was closely linked to the Arte Povera movement. In 2014, he received the esteemed Praemium Imperiale award. He currently resides and creates in Turin, Italy.
Penone was born in Garessio, Italy, on April 3, 1947. He pursued his passion for sculpture at the Accademia Albertina in Turin, where he graduated in 1970.
Merging Art and Nature Through Sculpture
Penone’s sculptures, installations, and drawings stand out for their focus on artistic process and the use of organic materials like clay, stone, metal, and wood. His work seeks to blend nature with artistic expression, creating a seamless dialogue between the two. Trees, in particular—living forms that echo the human figure—are a central theme in his art. In 1969, he created his first Albero ("Tree") sculpture, a series that continues today. Since then, his work has consistently explored the poetic connection between humanity and the natural world, as well as the parallels between artistic and natural processes.
Early Works: The Fusion of Nature and Art
At just 21, Penone held his first solo exhibition in 1968 at the Deposito d'Arte Presente in Turin, featuring sculptures made from raw materials such as lead, iron, wax, wood, and plaster. His early works engaged with natural elements, as seen in Scala d’acqua ("Water Ladder"), where molten pitch was shaped by water, and Corda, pioggia, zinco. Corda, pioggia, sole ("Rope, Rain, Sun"), which was altered by exposure to the elements.
That same year, he began Alpi Marittime, a series of outdoor interventions in the Maritime Alps, where he manipulated trees to imprint traces of his gestures over time. He intertwined saplings (Ho intrecciato tre alberi), left a cast of his hand embedded in a tree (Continuerà a crescere tranne che in quel punto), and restrained branches with nets (Crescendo innalzerà la rete). These works emphasized the tree as a living entity, capable of preserving memory through its growth.
Penone further explored the connection between nature and the body with La mia altezza, la lunghezza delle mie braccia, il mio spessore in un ruscello ("My Height, the Length of My Arms, My Breadth in a Stream"), where a cement mold of his body was placed in a stream, marking it with his physical imprint. His experimental approach gained recognition in 1969 when Germano Celant included his works in the seminal Arte Povera publication, presenting them as a visual diary of process and transformation. That same year, his work was exhibited at Gian Enzo Sperone’s gallery in Turin.
Between 1969 and 1971, Penone expanded his exploration of trees as archives of time and interaction. In Pane alfabeto ("Bread Alphabet"), birds pecked at a loaf, revealing embedded metal letters, while in Scrive/legge/ricorda ("Writes/Reads/Remembers"), a steel wedge engraved with the alphabet was embedded in a tree trunk. Gli anni dell'albero più uno ("The Years of the Tree Plus One") further reinforced the idea of trees as living records of time.
A significant piece from this period, Il suo essere nel ventiduesimo anno di età in un'ora fantastica ("His Being in the Twenty-Second Year of His Age in a Fantastic Hour," 1969), involved sculpting a wooden beam to expose the tree’s original form at the same age as the artist. This fusion of sculpture, time, and organic memory became a defining aspect of his work. In 1979, reflecting on the poetic essence of trees, Penone wrote about their ability to carry the memory of their existence, connecting past, present, and nature’s silent yet persistent growth.
Penone in the 1970s: Tracing Nature, Memory, and the Body
During the 1970s, Giuseppe Penone focused on exploring the relationship between nature, memory, and the human body through sculpture. His works often involved trees, such as Albero di dodici metri ("Trees of Twelve Metres"), where he carved standing trees or wooden beams to reveal their earlier forms, metaphorically rewinding time. Similarly, in Cedro di Versailles ("Cedar of Versailles"), he sculpted the form of a young tree from an ancient cedar that had been uprooted by a storm. His interest in perception led him to Rovesciare i propri occhi ("Turning One’s Eyes Inside Out"), where he wore reflective contact lenses to disrupt his vision, reinforcing the idea of the artist as a mirror of reality.
Penone also explored the concept of imprints and contact. In Svolgere la propria pelle ("Developing One’s Own Skin"), he photographed his skin through glass, capturing the boundary between body and external space. This theme continued in Vaso ("Vase"), where he magnified the fingerprints left by an ancient potter, translating them into bronze sculptures. His experiments with organic forms included Patate ("Potatoes") and Zucche ("Pumpkins"), where he grew vegetables inside molds of his own face, later casting them in bronze. Throughout the decade, his artistic process emphasized transformation, using natural elements and the human body as intertwined subjects.
In the 1980s, Penone deepened his engagement with time and natural processes. His Essere Fiume ("Being the River") series involved selecting a stone from a river, tracing its origins to the mountains, and carving a similar rock to mimic the natural erosion process. By displaying the original and sculpted stones side by side, he highlighted the parallel between natural forces and artistic creation. He also explored the properties of water in works like Albero d'acqua ("Tree of Water") and Colonna d'acqua ("Column of Water"), reflecting on the contrast between water’s fluidity and sculpture’s solidity.
Penone continued experimenting with human gestures and memory, as seen in Gesti vegetali ("Vegetation Gestures"), where he imprinted his hands onto clay, later casting them in bronze to resemble fossilized movements. His work also extended to large-scale bronze tree sculptures in public spaces, such as Pozzo di Münster ("Well of Münster"), which featured a tree trunk with a sculpted handprint releasing water, and Albero delle vocali ("Vowel Tree"), a 30-meter-long sculpture installed in the Tuileries Garden.
The 1980s
By the late 1980s, his focus on contact as a generator of memory became even more pronounced. In Verde del bosco ("Green of the Woods"), he created frottages of tree trunks using their own leaves, emphasizing trees as living archives. He also experimented with glass sculptures shaped like nails, symbolizing both touch and transformation. His Terre ("Lands") series encapsulated the idea of earth as a record of human presence, with layers of soil enclosed in glass, preserving the imprint of his hand. Through these works, Penone reinforced his belief in nature as a dynamic, responsive entity, bridging the divide between human action and the natural world.
Giuseppe Penone in the 1990s and Beyond
From the 1990s onwards, Penone’s work continued to explore the relationship between nature and the human body, often integrating organic and anatomical elements. In Suture ("Sutures," 1991), exhibited at Église Courmelois, he used jagged steel lines to represent the divisions between the brain’s lobes, with a central glass tube containing soil, symbolizing the connection between humanity and the natural world. Similarly, in Foglie ("Leaves") and Anatomie ("Anatomies," 1993), he drew parallels between natural forms and the human body, carving Carrara marble to resemble veins, echoing the movement of blood through living organisms.
Penone further explored the idea of growth and transformation in Propagazione ("Propagation," 1994), where fingerprints expanded into wave-like patterns, and Sorgente di cristallo ("Crystal Spring," 1996), which transformed a tree trunk’s imprint into a transparent glass cast. This concept continued in Albero delle vertebre ("Tree of Vertebrae," 1997–1998), where a tree trunk was shaped from crystal and juxtaposed with plaster forms derived from a human skull, reinforcing the connection between organic and human structures.
In immersive installations like Respirare l’ombra ("Breathing the Shadow"), he used laurel leaves to create a dimly lit environment that combined sensory experiences—sight, touch, and smell. Another work, exhibited at the Palais des Papes in Avignon (2000), featured a gilded bronze lung sculpted from laurel leaves, emphasizing the theme of breath and organic life.
Throughout the early 2000s, Penone increasingly used natural textures to evoke human traces. In Pelle di foglie ("Skin of Leaves," 2000), interwoven leaves mimicked veins and nerve endings, while Spoglia d’oro su spine d’acacia ("Golden Skin on Acacia Thorns," 2002) depicted lips formed by thousands of acacia thorns, transforming human touch into a natural landscape. Works like Pelle di marmo su spine d’acacia ("Marble Skin on Acacia Thorns," 2001) at the Musée d'Orsay and Pelle di cedro ("Cedar Skin," 2002) at the Centre Georges Pompidou further explored the idea of organic imprints as a means of preserving memory.
In Albero giardino ("Tree Garden," 2002), created for a former railway site in Turin, Penone likened human intervention to natural processes, designing a path shaped like a tree’s growth pattern. His large-scale outdoor installation The Garden of Fluid Sculptures (2003–2007) at Palazzo di Venaria consisted of fourteen bronze, wood, and marble sculptures spread across its gardens, reinforcing his dialogue between culture and nature.
His work continued to receive international recognition. At the 2007 Venice Biennale, he created an installation for the opening of the Padiglione Italiano, while in 2011, he participated in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Galleria Italia with Repeating the Forest (2007–2008), where he removed tree rings to expose a younger form hidden beneath decades of growth. This idea of revealing nature’s internal structures was also central to Versailles Cedar (2000–2003), where he carved a fallen cedar’s trunk to expose its core. Reflecting on his approach, Penone stated:
"My artwork, through the language of sculpture, reveals the essence of matter and uncovers the hidden life within."
Giuseppe Penone and Arte Povera
Since 1969, Giuseppe Penone has been a key figure in Arte Povera, the radical artistic movement defined by Germano Celant in 1967. Alongside artists like Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, and Mario Merz, Penone rejected traditional artistic conventions, embracing raw materials and organic processes. His work emphasized the poetic and transformative power of nature, aligning with the movement’s exploration of elemental forces and time.
Penone’s emergence in Arte Povera coincided with a growing dialogue between Italian and international avant-gardes. He participated in major exhibitions such as Konzeption-Conception at Schloss Morsbroich (1969), Conceptual Art, Arte Povera, Land Art at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna in Turin, and Information at MoMA New York (1970), reinforcing his role in redefining contemporary sculpture through a profound connection with the natural world.
Selena Mattei
| ArtMajeur Magazine
