Alfonso Artiaco gallery is pleased to announce the inauguration of the Giuseppe Penone exhibition "Ombra di Terra", in the presence of the artist, on October 30th at 7.30 pm

Giuseppe Penone was born in Garessio in the province of Cuneo in 1947. He lives and works in Turin, periodically residing in Paris where he teaches at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Penone's work has passed through the doors of the most prestigious museums in the world including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Kunstalle in Basel, the Stadelijk Museum in Amsterdam. After the Naples exhibition, at the end of January, the solo exhibition at the Drawing Center in New York will follow, and in April the great anthological exhibition at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris.

In the exhibition "Ombra di terra" two large works are presented: a large sculpture in bronze and terracotta, and a large wall work.

Since his artistic debut (his first personal exhibition dates back to 1968 at the Turin Present Art Deposit) Giuseppe Penone has based his research around the relationship between man and nature.

Through sensory knowledge, man acquires an empirical and intuitive awareness of the Universe and of the laws that regulate its growth and decay. Nature is thus perceived as an organic process of mutation of form. The fluid conception of the world in its relationship with art leads Giuseppe Penone to express himself, on the sheet, passing from the graphic sign to the word and, in space, from inorganic to organic matter. The history of materials, woods, lands, bronzes, terracotta, always animates Penone's works. His Art is not pure presence, the object is not placed helpless in front of the observer, but is enriched by the vital breath that has traveled it, by the fire that has shaped it, by the hand that has traced it. The conceptual strength of Penone's works does not stop at the modeling of the form, but extends to that of the word, through which he enriches his research with further meanings:

"Sculptor as the casual interference of a heavy intelligence charged with earth, servant of the eyes and hands, closely adhering to real things and which does not separate the idea from the tool."

(G.Penone, 1978)

This exhibition follows the two previous ones held at the Artiaco Gallery in Pozzuoli in October 1988 and October 1996, bearing witness to a now consolidated relationship.