Giuseppe Penone's Bronze Tree Sculptures Prepare for Gagosian New York Exhibition

Giuseppe Penone, a leading figure of the Arte Povera movement since the 1960s, is preparing a sprawling solo exhibition at Gagosian gallery in New York, opening April 22. At age 79, the artist works with mounting intensity, creating life-size bronze sculptures of trees in warehouses around his Turin studio, which he treats as a private museum. Penone's work originates from the forests of Piedmont in northern Italy, where he began treating nature as a collaborator in his early 20s. He rejects traditional studio spaces, using the woods as his studio and trees as interactive subjects to reveal symbiosis between humans and nature. The artist inspects his bronze tree sculptures at the Del Chiaro foundry in Pietrasanta, Italy, relying on fallen trees from his own forest tract. Penone describes trees as extraordinary sculptures whose forms record their life stories through branches that spring forth according to survival drives. His early works include gripping a tree to leave a model of his hand, photographing the trunk as it enveloped his fist, and casting the eventual form in bronze. With woodsman's robust health, Penone installs his mammoth works alongside a young team at Gagosian, acknowledging his recent exhibition surge with a wide smile and fluttering silver hair.