London, July 2025
Giuseppe Penone in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
Let’s begin at the beginning. You started your life in Garessio, near Cuneo in Piedmont. I’d like to know how this landscape—natural and agricultural—served as an inspiration for you?
Giuseppe It was an education. I lived there in contact with nature and in a form of society that essentially belonged to the nineteenth century. It was a social reality detached from what was happening elsewhere. Only later, in the 1960s, did it reconnect in a certain sense with the rest of the world. There was little industrial activity, but essentially, it was made up of villages and hamlets, where people lived their whole lives within small portions of space. This was something that interested me. It stayed with me when I went to Japan in the 1970s and visited the temples, the sand gardens and the moss gardens. The monks spent their lives in such a confined space, recreating a microcosm, and in some way, I understood this from my own upbringing, because in those small mountain villages, there was something similar: people created an environment that had a universal value.
Our Serpentine exhibition in London started with the trees. We met and discussed an intervention with trees in the park, and that introduced this beautiful idea of yours—not only to place trees in Kensington Gardens, but to bring the park, or the garden, into the gallery. Before we dive into your exhibition at the Serpentine, I’d like to talk a little about how trees came into your work. Your first Alberi (Tree) was created in 1969. You once said in an interview that the tree, in a way, is the simplest, perhaps even the primordial idea of vitality and culture.
Giuseppe Yes, I created my first work on tree growth at the end of 1968. In 1969, I revealed a tree inside a wooden beam, creating the first Alberi. My interest in trees comes from the fact that they’re a life form that stores time within their structure. You can find the form of their existence within the wood itself. During those years, there was an interest in Minimalist art, particularly in industrial and geometric forms. So, taking a beam with a geometric shape and finding an organic element within it was a way for me to engage with this moment in art, albeit in a very secluded way. The works I made at that time on the growth of trees associated my actions with the tree. I created them because I thought how the tree as a material that could be moulded. It has a solid appearance, but in reality, it’s fluid, malleable and plastic. That was the principle, a specific interest in all my work.
opening image: Giuseppe Penone, Pressione 2 (Pressure 2), 1977.
“The project I’d perhaps like to realise one day is a park—a park with the path as its central idea. The path forks and spreads, taking on a form that resembles the organic growth of a plant. It would be a large park with a central path that follows the natural contours of the land, from which major secondary branches extend. Along these branches, or at their ends, works would be installed. This creates a path to follow, lined with works, but the road eventually comes to an end—you must turn back.”
And these first trees were intended for the interior, to be shown in the inside. When did the idea of making trees to be placed outside come about?
Giuseppe These works, being made of wood, need to be preserved and protected. After learning the technique of bronze casting, I thought that I could develop a work by associating bronze with the tree. Bronze has a colouring very similar to that of plants, and it also oxidises, taking on colours that are quite like those of the vegetal world. Traditional bronze casting is done by gravity—the metal drips into the mould by the force of gravity. To get the metal into all parts of the sculpture, you create a system of channels that’s very similar to tree branches. A structure is formed that’s borrowed from the plant world. For the plant, this same structure elevates its weight and existence in space. It counteracts the force of gravity with the force of light. Based on this observation, this idea, I created the bronze works with the weight of stones to emphasise the structure of the trees.
You wrote in 1980: ‘Bronze preserves plant life and preserves all of its appearance’. And if it’s placed outside the gallery in nature, there’s a reaction with the climate, with oxidation, and, as you mentioned, it takes on the same colours. It’s like an assimilation, in a way, of the plants around it. You described it as the ‘synthesis of the landscape’. Can you talk more about this? It’s such a beautiful concept.
Giuseppe I was inspired by reading a small book by Plutarch called The Delphic Dialogues. A group of people visit Delphi, and at a certain point, they start discussing the bronze statues. However, they don’t talk directly about the statues, but about the colours of the bronze. The conversation revolves around the fact that in Delphi, the colour of bronze takes on a particular hue that isn’t found anywhere else. Nowhere else does this synthesis of atmospheric events occur. The specific quality of the place is enhanced by the colouring of the bronze.
Since 1980, you’ve made more trees in public spaces, and this is where we began your project in London. Kensington Gardens seems ideal for these works.
Giuseppe It’s a place that allows for a close dialogue between the large trees present in the park and the trees that I’ve made, which aren’t as large in proportion. However, they can still have a significant presence.
When you came to London for the first site visit, we walked in the park and came up with this idea that we’re all very excited about: until now, we’ve had artists working either outside or inside, but with you, we’ll have works both inside and outside. You had this revelation of placing works with leaves such as Soffio di foglie (Breath of Leaves), and incorporating the smell of leaves inside the gallery with Respirare l’ombra (To Breathe the Shadow). How did this idea come about? Was it a work you’ve made before, and will it be revisited for this exhibition?
Giuseppe It came out of a reflection. I’d made works about breathing before, back in the 70s. I thought of breath as a volume of air, which is in a sense, a sculpture—the kind of sculpture that accompanies us throughout our lives. Soffio (Breath) was created in terracotta as a visualisation of the shape that breath takes in the air. Later, I shifted to thinking about air entering the body instead. Reflecting on the idea of breathing, this movement of air within our being, I thought how these leaves that create shade, are essential to our life because their vital action creates oxygen. Respirare l’ombra comes from the idea that leaves create a shadow, but a positive shadow, not a negative one. The shadow often carries a negative connotation, associated with death, but here it represents a vital shadow. The idea is to cover the central gallery space completely with these leaves, so that when one enters, it feels like going into a dense canopy of trees. The wall lined with cages of laurel leaves will, of course, have a scent that we’ll breathe. This action of introducing air into the body is emphasised through the scent. The other work, Soffio di foglie, shows the imprint of the body and breath. And I did it with leaves because leaves are light and they move easily.
Your work A occhi chiusi (With Eyes Closed), featuring two huge closed eyes drawn with acacia thorns, will be in the first room of the show. Does this work refer directly back to your very significant early work Rovesciare i propri occhi (Reversing One’s Eyes)?
Giuseppe A occhi chiusi explores the relationship between sight and the act of closing one’s eyes—something that has interested me since the very beginning. I created Rovesciare i propri occhi in 1970 using mirrored contact lenses that interrupted my vision by reflecting back what my eyes would normally see, effectively rendering me blind. This process defines the volume of my body as a sculpture. The relationship with closure—the closing and absence of sight—creates a space for imagination. It’s no coincidence that blind people, or those who had been blinded, were often the ones who made divinations.
Persone e anni is both a drawing and writing that acts as a link in the exhibition. Can you tell me more about it?
Giuseppe Being made out of fabric, the work will be affixed to the wall. It’s the work that takes the visitor into the other rooms of the exhibition. If they go to the right, it will guide them into the second room. If they go to the left, it will lead them the other way around. People can follow the writing if they want to. The writing outlines a rubbing of a tree branch, following the same path as the sap that rises and descends within the trunk. The words trace the tree, forming and occupying a space that ideally corresponds to a year of growth. The more the sentences, the more the years of growth.ù
I started a movement with Umberto Eco and Etel Adnan on Instagram to protest against the disappearance of handwriting, and you’ve used this idea of handwriting for a long time in your drawings. Can you talk more about this?
Giuseppe The writing on the work may be difficult to read, but still, there is the possibility of reading it. Handwriting is a gesture very similar to drawing. It’s a gesture that synthesises the word, so it becomes a drawing that comes from the word, something codified. And it testifies to the identity of a person—everyone has different handwriting. There’s an aspect of the individual imprint within handwriting. For me, it’s also the easiest and quickest way to write down ideas, alongside drawing.
Drawing is a fundamental dimension of your practice. There’s a whole collection of drawings that you donated to Centre Pompidou, Paris, linked to a major exhibition there two years ago. There will also be drawings at Serpentine. In the catalogue, we also have a chapter that features your drawings. How would you describe the role of drawing?
Giuseppe There are many types of drawings: the design drawing, which serves as a kind of notation of ideas; the drawing that’s an artwork in itself; and the drawing that’s playful and brings pleasure. All of these elements are part of a specific language that isn’t fully captured by the term drawing. In reality, there are many different approaches to drawing.
Read the full interview on Muse September Issue 66.
