Giuseppe Penone–Sculpture as Breath, Drawing as Skin

Giuseppe Penone is a contemporary artist associated with the Arte Povera art movement. He reinvented sculpture, drawing, conceptual photography, art installation, through proto environmental art with the sensibility of a late late romantic.

Curator and art critic Germano Celant created the term #artepovera in 1967 to highlight a tendency toward a use of reduced material or idea to its archetype. How does Penone fit into that notion? He seems to have had a singular place in the Italian and global Western art canon of the time, using organic growth as an art process that the artist mirrors, plays and aligns with. Have we been forcing a dialogue between his work and Celant’s concept? What other relations with memory and matter has he expanded through his work? Was he a pioneer of eco-art? A late romantic? All of the above? 

Artist ⁠Diogo Pimentão⁠ is my co-host for the first time. As ever, I’ll introduce the artist and he’ll take us through this small retrospective exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. 

Curated by Claude Adjil, Curator at Large, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, with Alexa Chow, Assistant Exhibitions Curator.

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