With Michelangelo Pistoletto and Giovanni Anselmo, Giuseppe Penone is one of the most representative artists of the avant-garde which takes the name of Arte Povera, a movement promoted and theorized by Germano Celant at the end of the 1960s and which was born in open controversy with the traditional art whose techniques and supports are rejected in order to make use of "poor" materials, earth, wood, iron, rags, waste or abandoned objects with the idea of redefining the language of contemporary society. Thus Penone debuted in 1968 with works made with unconventional materials such as lead, copper, wax, pitch, wood and which in some cases even involve the natural action of the elements. Today his art is celebrated in the most important international museums - from the Tate in London to the MOCA in Los Angeles, from the Center Pompidou in Paris to the MoMA in New York - and it is anything but rebellious. Penone arrives today in Paris at the temple of Gagosian art and intends to present his latest works which take up some of the themes dear to him, such as the use of the artist's body and his hands, to see it again in a new naturalistic context where light is the central element in the birth of the creative gesture.
