Catalogue - Giuseppe Penone | Dessins

Description

In 2020, the Italian artist Giuseppe Penone made an exceptional donation of several hundred drawings to the National Museum of Modern Art (Centre Pompidou) and to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Center Pompidou received some 328 drawings from 1967 to 2019, which considerably enrich the collection of the Cabinet d'Art Graphique.

The exhibition presented in the eponymous gallery from October 2022 to February 2023 presents this incredible gift.

A major figure in contemporary Italian and European art, Giuseppe Penone is associated with Arte povera, a movement which, in the 1960s in Italy, rejected the consumer society and affirmed the importance of the creative gesture.

His reflections on the relationship between man and nature and the work around the body in his work also bring him closer to other movements such as Process art and Land art.

The drawings given by Giuseppe Penone constitute the major part of his work on paper. They bear witness to the many mediums and techniques used: pencil, ballpoint pen, watercolor, coffee, Indian ink, rubbing, graphite, rice paper, cardboard, Japanese paper, glossy paper treated with turpentine, charcoal, adhesive tape, leaves, etc

Never exhibited for most of them, they constitute a precious chronological and typological range to better understand the masterful work of the artist.

"For me, drawing exerts a double fascination: the constantly renewed surprise offered by its materiality and the unique possibility of visualizing a gesture". For Giuseppe Penone, each technique offers a range of potential expressions; the same goes for the many papers used: from smooth to rough, from cool white to amber white, from silky to fibrous. The different types of support give the same sign a different expressive value.