Giuseppe Penone (1947)
Italy

"Born in 1947 in Garessio (Italy), Giuseppe Penone is a major artist on the international art scene, heir to arte povera founded by the art critic Germano Celant at the end of the 1960s, which advocates a return to essential art by initiating a reflection on the relationship between nature and culture. After studying accounting, he entered the Accademia di Belle Arti in Turin where he chose sculpture. His first personal exhibition took place in the same city in 1969; From then on, he continued with installations, public commissions as well as exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world.

Giuseppe Penone's work is characterized both by the vitality of a questioning of man and nature and by the beauty of its forms and materials (wood, bronze, marble, stone, acacia thorns. ..). His work is centered on three constants: the relationship of the body to the work which he approaches in a multiple and original way; the questioning of the creative process itself which runs through his work integrating archaism, classicism and contemporaneity; the beauty to the sublime whose works invite the viewer, beyond sight, to an experience of all the senses.

The Center Pompidou organized a major retrospective of his work in 2004. In 2007, the artist represented Italy at the Venice Biennale. In 2008, an exhibition was dedicated to him at the Villa Medici in Rome. He is also the guest of honor at the Château de Versailles in 2013 for an exceptional exhibition in the gardens of the Estate. The following year, he won the prestigious Praemium Imperiale. In 2021-2022, the Bibliothèque nationale de France hosted an exhibition of his work, “Pensieri e linfa (Thought and sap)”. He taught at the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris from 1997 to 2012."

(Source, website, Académie des Beaux-Arts)

Work :

• Lettere d'alfabeto (1970)