Giuseppe Penone

Galerie Gian Enzo Sperone, Turin
Collection Sergio Ermini, Verona
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Giuseppe Penone, 1980
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada; Fort Worth, Fort Worth Art Museum; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Giuseppe Penone, 1983, p. 42, illustrated
Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Giuseppe Penone, 1986
Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Giuseppe Penone, 1986, p. 30, illustrated
Nice, Galerie des Ponchettes, Les années 70 – les années mémoire, 1988
Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Penone, 1991, pp. 50-51 and 57, illustrated
London, Hayward Gallery, Grace and Gravity: The Changing Condition of Sculpture 1965-1975, 1993, p. 117, illustrated in colour and p. 119, illustrated
Paris, Galerie Liliane et Michel Durand-Dessert, Arte Povera 1965-1972, 1995
Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, L’Art au Futur Antérieur, 2004, illustrated in colour

The Alberi executed between 1969 and 1975 are in the following permanent collections: 
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris
Musée d’Art et d’Industrie, Saint-Etienne
Castello di Rivoli, Turin
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Kunstmuseum, Luzern
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou - Musée national d'art moderne, Identité italienne: L'art en Italie depuis 1959, 1981, p. 618, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Guggenheim Museum, Italian Art Now: An American Perspective, 1982, p. 94, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Cologne, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Eine Kunst-Geschichte in Turin 1965-1983, 1983, p. 90, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Giuseppe Penone, 1984, p. 29, illustrated
Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Qu’est ce que la sculpture moderne?, 1986, p. 315, illustrated
Germano Celant, Giuseppe Penone, 1989, p. 25, illustrated and p. 52, illustrated in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Bologna, Galleria d’arte moderna, Penone, 1989, p. 35, illustrated
Maïten Bouisset, Arte Povera, Paris 1994, p. 67, illustrated
Fabien Faure, 'Arbres. Etre Fleuve. Quelques objets de pensée de Giuseppe Penone', in: Les Cahiers du Musée National Moderne, no. 63, April 1998, p. 77, illustrated
Jacinto Lageira, 'L’objet du matériau - Arte Povera/Minimal Art - deux logiques principales de l’art contemporain', in: Revue Ligeia, 1998-99, p. 187, illustrated

This work is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity signed by the artist

"Forests, avenues, bushes, gardens, parks and orchards... All of their trees enclosed within doors, tables, floorboards, planks, beams, boats, chariots… " (Giuseppe Penone)

"Every day for the last twenty days, I have been working with a carpenter's diligence near Garessio, the village in which I was born […]. That is where I work to extract the form of the tree fossilized within a wooden beam. Of course, one can say that any object in wood was once a tree. I might just as easily have used a door or the leg of a table. In this specific case however, I chose a beam because I needed something significant in size. From a technical vantage point, if I wish to restore the beam's appearance of the tree it once was at a given moment during its vegetal life, I must first precisely indicate the tree's summit and base. In order to do so, I rely on the growth rings, which remain visible through two ever-present layers, one more dense, the other more tender. The base is to be found where the dense layers are larger. That's where I begin carving. I advance simply by always following the densest layer and retrace the growth-process a second time […]. But this process, which entails a month’s work for me and […] is instantly visible to the person who sees the completed work, was in reality originally very long. This is true to such a point that in a certain sense I liken my work to the making of a film which runs in reverse at an accelerated speed. […] What I find even more fascinating, what I feel to be an ever present aspect of my work, is the time it takes me to carve in relation to the time it takes to the tree to grow. I am driven by the curiosity to discover a tree each time around and with it a new story. What compels me to act this way is the fantastic appearance, to my eyes, of any door, table, window, or floor. All harbor the image of a tree within." (Giuseppe Penone)

It is in 1969 that Giuseppe Penone, the youngest protagonist of Arte Povera, only twenty-two at the time, introduces a new sculptural gesture by partially chiseling away at a beam to extricate the tree it secretly conceals. Likened to a self-portrait, the tree in this case sees twenty-two of its years brought to light, as determined by its concentric growth rings. Also noteworthy, is the manner in which the partial chiseling of the beam transforms the untouched half into a natural base that renders the sculptural gesture tangible, whereas the complete carving of the beam would paradoxically have annihilated it... Through their peaceful osmosis, the Alberi (Trees) bear witness to a peasant tradition Penone has always affirmed. They are equally inscribed within the ancestral tradition of sculpture which required the artist to possess an intimate knowledge of his material, understanding knots in wood for example, in order to extricate the form. Yet, this time around, it is no longer a matter of stamping a human gesture into an omnipresent nature, but of unearthing -much like an archeologist- the permanency of a nature which lies latent beneath the smooth surface of manufactured objects.

The choice of the beam at a time in which American Minimal Art adopts industrial orthogonics, indicates the artist's ambition to solidly entrench artworks within an ancestral tradition, while at the same time establishing a more intimate and authentic renewed relation with the latter: as he pursued the creation of the Alberi (Trees) for several years, Giuseppe Penone mentioned the idea of "regenerating a forest". Penone breaks with the tradition of the demiurgic sculptor using a "neutral" material to project the form of his work. By revealing a pre-existing but concealed form, the sculptor becomes the mediator for an authentic revelation: the gesture opens our minds irreversibly in that even the tiniest knot in the most insignificant piece of wood making up our everyday objects could just as readily reveal to us the resuscitated form of the tree from which it is derived.

This is one of Penone's emblematic works and a major reference-point in Arte Povera as regards Minimal Art. An indispensable articulation in the history of sculpture, the work here proposed belongs to the first generation of Alberi (Trees) conceived between 1969 and 1975. It is represented in the most prestigious public and private collections.