7 Italian Artists Fighting for the Environment

Giuliano Mauri's Cattedrale Vegetale, first built in 2001 for Arte Sella, uses living trees that grow within a woven branch structure, eventually replacing it. Giuseppe Penone, an Arte Povera artist, frequently incorporates trees in his work, either leaving them natural or reproducing them in bronze and wood. Francesco Simeti, a Sicilian artist based in New York, creates compositions blending botanical and zoological illustrations with polluted waterway scenes, as in his 2017 installation Swell. Eugenio Tibaldi's Giardino abusivo (2019) was installed at Museo del Novecento in Milan. Federico Massa, known as Iena Cruz, creates eco-friendly murals using Airlite paint that absorbs smog; his 2018 work Hunting Pollution in Rome is Europe's largest eco-friendly mural, followed by Anthropoceano in Milan in 2019. Giorgia Lupi, a data visualization pioneer, exhibited The Room of Change at Triennale di Milano in 2019 as part of Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, a 30-meter hand-embroidered data tapestry showing environmental changes. Andreco, with an engineering background, explores climate science through murals, sculptures, videos, and performances, notably his Climate series combining science and activism.