PRESS RELEASE MUSÉE CANTONAL DES BEAUX-ARTS DE LAUSANNE
GIUSEPPE PENONE.
Regards croisés
25.9.2015 – 3.1.2016
You are cordially invited to a press conference on
Thursday 24 September 2015 at 11 am
The artist will be present
Opening reception
Thursday 24 September 2015 at 6.30 pm
Press contact
Loïse Cuendet, [email protected]
Tél. direct: +41 (0)21 316 34 48
To download press images: www.mcba.ch, press relations
User name: mcba-presse / Password: gpresse
Address
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Nuit des musées
Saturday 26 September 2015, 2 pm – 2 am
www.lanuitdesmusees.ch
Palais de Rumine, place de la Riponne 6
CH-1014 Lausanne
Tel.: +41 (0)21 316 34 45
Fax.: +41 (0)21 316 34 46
[email protected]
www.mcba.ch
Opening hours
Tue.- Fri. : 11 am – 6 pm 26 Sept. : 2 am – 2 pm
Sat.- Sun. : 11 am – 5 pm 30 Sept. : 11 am – 4 pm
Mon. : closed
24, 31 Dec., 2 Jan. : 11 am – 5 pm
25 Dec., 1st Jan. : closed
Admissions
Adults : CHF 10.–
Even more
Pensioners, students, apprentices : CHF 8.–
Under 16 : free
st
1 Saturday of the month : free
Access
Metro M2 : station Riponne – Maurice Béjart
Bus 1, 2 : stop at Rue Neuve
Bus 7, 8 : stop at Riponne – Maurice Béjart
GIUSEPPE PENONE.
Regards croisés
25.9.2015 – 3.1.2016
THE EXHITIBION
The Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, is presenting French-spea-
king Switzerland’s first exhibition by Giuseppe Penone (b. Garessio, Italy, 1947,
lives and works in Turin). The exhibition has been prepared in close collaboration
with the artist.
« The skin of the universe is mirrored on the tip of the pencil,
the surface of the sculpture on the skin of the hands »
Giuseppe Penone, 2002
Every great sculptor is also a great draughtsman – and Giuseppe Penone is living
proof of this. Here the first museum exhibition by this major Arte Povera figure in Frenchspeaking Switzerland reverses the usual practice of spotlighting Penone’s sculptures,
with his preliminary drawings serving as backup.
For this exhibition drawing is our point of departure, with the sculptures appearing
only in counterpoint: drawings by Penone himself, of course, but also works on paper
from his personal collection, by names like Alberto Giacometti, Amadeo Modigliani,
Giacomo Balla, Pierre Bonnard, Kazimir Malevich and Louis Soutter. An exchange of
points of view, then, regarding different media, different creative time frames and different
forms of expression. Formal likeness is a minor concern here: what these interchanges
between the graphic worlds of Penone and his illustrious peers reveal are subtle elective
affinities and a lesser-known, more intimate side of the Italian artist.
The exhibition comprises close to a hundred of Penone’s drawings dating from
1967 to 2006, thirteen drawings by other artists, two big Verde del bosco frottages from
1984, a selection of the famous Gesto vegetale bronzes entwined around plants, the big
Spazio di luce (2008), recently shown at Versailles, and a handsome figurative sculpture
from 1983 which has never been exhibited before.
The museum’s two biggest rooms are given over to the sculptures, with the other
spaces – or « cabinets » – housing the drawings ; the result is an alternation between the
infinitely small and the infinitely large, between the idea of conceptual development and
the finished work. Visual interplay, then, between drawing and sculpture, drawings by
Penone and other artists, and diametrically opposite notions of drawing : as a medium for
ideas and preliminary note-taking, but also as a specific, freestanding form of expression
in the dual sense of the terms dessein in French and disegno in Italian.
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 3
PUBLICATION
Giuseppe Penone. Regard croisés
Catalogue in French, edited by Bernard Fibicher, with essays by Giuseppe Penone,
Didier Semin, Bernard Fibicher and Ruggero Penone.
22,5 x 29,4 cm, hard cover, 160 pages, 134 coloured illustrations.
5 Continents, Milan and Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, 2015.
Price : CHF 38.- / after the exhibition : CHF 45.Order direct from the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts
(postage and packing charges apply)
THE VIEWING ITINERARY
Room 1.1
What Penone likes about Giacomo Balla is « the lines that construct the space of
an object » ; and about Hans Richter, « the overlaid lines that construct the volume of a
sound compressed inside a bourgeois space ». The sketch by Balla, the Italian Futurist,
is in fact a project for a piece of knockdown furniture, and is structured by straight lines
that provide a grid for the deployment of circles and triangles. The theme of the geometrical as opposed to the organic is central to ten Penone drawings that make no secret of
their character as concrete projects : drawing in the sense of dessein, disegno, design.
The Hans Richter sketch, all angles and vigorous hatching, shows a violinist
standing behind a woman seated at a piano. It interacts with Penone’s drawings and their
forthrightly « matieristic » and « sexual » contrasts.
Room 1.2
This part of the exhibition brings together various Propagazione works by Penone
dating from 1993–2012 with Adolfo Wildt’s delicately nuanced concentric circles and
Amadeo Modigliani’s harmoniously arranged arcs.
In these compositions Penone applies his ten fingers to a single sheet – or ten
sheets – of paper and expands the initial fingerprints with fine, concentric pencil lines like
topographies of unknown lands. In this way he sets up complex relationships between
tip and surface, centrifugal and centripetal movements, micro- and macrocosm, the individual and the universal. The onyx he used for the most recent of his Propagazione
drawings, in 2012, is one of the stones rejected by the modernists on the grounds of their
ornamental character, but often used by the virtuoso sculptor Wildt.
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 4
Room 2
Entirely devoted to nature, Room 2 has been transformed into a huge glasshouse.
Against a backdrop of Penone’s Verde del bosco (The Green of the Forest), gigantic
compositions obtained by rubbing green leaves on tree trunks, it houses two groups of
sculptures titled Struttura del tempo (Structure of Time) and Gesto vegetale (Vegetal
Gesture).
The Struttura del tempo works are kinds of imaginary, three-dimensional chronophotographs of the growth of a tree. Placing a branch on the ground, Penone repeatedly
covers its length with clay «snakes» of similar dimensions until the limits of its equilibrium
are reached; he then casts the branch and snakes in bronze, endowing growth with a spatial
dimension and constructing kinds of «natural dwellings». His Gesto vegetale pieces are
bronze human figures in classical poses — reclining, standing, walking, crouching, etc.
– with only their «skeletons» made by the artist: the creation of volume is left to nature.
It is interesting to note that the works in this room display subtle links with the
drawings in the adjacent spaces (1 and 3).
Room 3.1
Of Alberto Giacometti, another artist whose drawing is indissociable from sculpture,
Giuseppe Penone has said, «Giacometti’s drawings are related to the idea of sculpture:
he finds form through an accumulation of gestures while, at the same time, we see this
idea of effacement, of cancellation of the individual’s body. He does this with space, too:
in the drawings of the studio, the drawings of interior space, there’s this way of working
that destroys…»
From Giacometti Penone has taken interior views which magically bring out the volume
of a few intersecting lines – exactly like the dripped watercolour that provided the preliminary
sketches for the series of Penone’s Pelle di foglie (Skins of Leaves), with their silhouettes
of spiky branches pointing in all directions. In his studies of breathing Penone tries to
suggest invisible volumes produced by the human body, but somehow detached from it.
Room 3.2
Three Pierre Bonnard drawings in a completely different style serve as an «introduction» to this section. «In Bonnard’s drawings,» Penone writes, «there’s a gradual
expunging of the image. The character loses its structure, loses its individual presence,
and becomes part of a whole; it becomes painting.» His own Transparencies and
Anatomies are drawings that try to «create zones of matter, of light, while cancelling
forms out and making them interpenetrate» – a way of working he admires in Bonnard.
Among Penone’s drawings, it is these ones, so markedly «value-inflected», that tend
most strongly towards painting.
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 5
Room 4
«It’s the idea of contact,» says Giuseppe Penone, «and thus always the idea
of sculpture: you touch things and you understand them through touch.» Gesture and
imprint are the themes of this «cabinet» at whose centre stands an old sculpture, never
shown before. This is a bust of the artist’s son, Ruggero, which Penone made by placing
his hands on the child’s head and immediately transferring his tactile memory to a block
of clay. The hands of the father thus recreated the son’s head in a near-divine gesture. A
Gesto vegetale group of drawings, a late finger painting by Louis Soutter and a gestural
composition by Henri Michaux counterpoint a work which, while unique in the Penone
oeuvre, remains totally consistent with his «philosophy».
Room 5
Room 5 is home to a single, meaningfully complex sculpture: Spazio di luce. A
bronze tree trunk cut into eight segments extends before the viewer like an enormous
centipede. As we approach, we find that the trunk has in fact been hollowed out and
coloured gold on the inside. Thus the tree, while reaching out through its branches,
inwardly offers a space for the light which it needs in order to live, but which is usually
halted by the bark. On closer inspection, however, we realise that the interior is a replica
of the bark, while the exterior bears traces of the sculptor’s hands: this because he personally applied to the trunk the layer of wax called for by the casting process. The artist
sees this layer as the last growth ring in the tree’s life cycle and a sign of the merging of
the human and vegetal worlds.
Room 6
This final «cabinet» is a tribute to Kazimir Malevich, whose radical abstraction,
far removed from any notion of nature, would seem to set him at the opposite pole from
Penone. What Penone is interested in, though, is this Suprematist artist’s mystical side,
and in particular the cross that seems to turn in space. As Penone has said, «The sensations of movement, projection and ascent of the shapes are accentuated by a few light
marks that repeat the square and the cross on the lower part of the paper. These marks
suggest a helical movement in space, an ascent resembling the growth spiral of plants.»
In addition to a black square – anti-Suprematist because essentially organic – the Italian
has included a series of 24 drawing-collages of imprints of leaves and parts of the body
coated with graphite powder and pigment; the imprints are lifted off with sticky tape and
glued onto paper. Taking their inspiration from the movements of the cross, these works
effect a concrete synthesis of the human, vegetal and extra-sensory (mystical, divine,
cosmic?) worlds.
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 6
GIUSEPPE PENONE
Solo exhibitions (selection)
1969 Giuseppe Penone, Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone,
Torino
1970 Giuseppe Penone, Aktionsraum 1, Munich
1977 Giuseppe Penone. Bäume Augen Haare Wände
Tongefäss, Kunstmuseum, Luzern
1978 Giuseppe Penone. Objekte, Zeichnungen, Projektionen, Fotos, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden ;
Giuseppe Penone. Objekte und Wandzeichnungen,
Museum Folkwang, Essen
1980 Giuseppe Penone, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam ;
Giuseppe Penone, Ausstellung Studio, Mönchengladbach ;
Arbeiten aus Mönchengladbach 1979-1980, InK Halle für
Internationale Neue Kunst, Zurich
1983 Giuseppe Penone, National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa ; Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth ; Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago
1984 Giuseppe Penone, ARC Musée d’art moderne de la
Ville de Paris, Paris
1985 Cinq Artistes, Quatre Châteaux et une Abbaye en
Gironde, Château de Malle, Preignac
1986 Giuseppe Penone, Musée de Peinture et Sculpture,
Grenoble ; Giuseppe Penone, Musée des Beaux-Arts,
Nantes ; Giuseppe Penone. Creuser la Mémoire de la
Boue (Exercice de sculpture), Palais des Beaux-Arts,
Charleroi
1988 Giuseppe Penone, Musée Rodin, Paris
1989 Giuseppe Penone. Recent Sculpture, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol ; Giuseppe Penone. Recent Sculpture, Dean
Clough Art Foundation, Halifax ; Giuseppe Penone, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Villa delle Rose, Bologna
1991 Giuseppe Penone. Foglie e suture, Eglise de Courmelois, Reims/Valde-Vesle ; Penone. L’Espace de la main,
Ancienne Douane, Strasbourg ; Giuseppe Penone, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli
1992 Penone. Le acque, i venti, le genti, gli alberi, i serpi
sono vene di pietra, Réfectoire de l’Abbaye de Tournus,
Tournus
1993 Giuseppe Penone, Musée-Château d’Annecy, Annecy
1994 Giuseppe Penone, Centro Culturale Teresa Orsola
Bussa De Rossi, Fossano ; Giuseppe Penone. L’image
du toucher, FRAC Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain de
Picardie, Amiens
1997 Giuseppe Penone. Die Adern des Steins, Kunstmuseum ; Giuseppe Penone. The veins of stone, Toyota
Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota ; Giuseppe Penone, Carré
d’Art, Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes / De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tilburg / Galleria Civica d’Arte
Contemporanea, Trento
1999 Giuseppe Penone 1968-1998, CGAC Centro Galego
de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela
2000 Giuseppe Penone. Respirare l’ombra, Synagoge
Stommeln, Pulheim
2002 Giuseppe Penone. Spoglia d’oro su spine d’acacia,
Spazio per l’arte contemporanea Tor Bella Monaca, Rome ;
Giuseppe Penone. Paesaggi del cervello, ex Chiesa della
Maddalena, Pesaro
2004 Giuseppe Penone. The Imprint of Drawing, The
Drawing Center, New York / Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes ; Penone. Rétrospective, Galerie Sud, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris ; Giuseppe Penone. Retrospectiva, CaixaForum, Fundación “la Caixa”, Barcelona
2006 Giuseppe Penone, CeSAC Centro Sperimentale per
le Arti Contemporanee, Il Filatoio, Caraglio / Galerie du
CAIRN, Musée-Promenade, Saint-Benoît, Digne-les-Bains ;
Giuseppe Penone, Museum Kurhaus, Kleve
2007 Giuseppe Penone. Sculture di linfa, Padiglione
Italiano, 52. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, La Biennale
di Venezia, Venice
2008 Giuseppe Penone, Académie de France à Rome,
Villa Medici, Roma ; Giuseppe Penone, MAMbo Museo
d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Bologne ; Giuseppe Penone,
Galleria Italia, AGO Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
2009 Giuseppe Penone. Matrice de sève, ENSBA École
nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Cabinet des dessins
Jean Bonna-Cour vitrée du Palais des études, Paris ; Giuseppe Penone, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota ;
Giuseppe Penone, Museo de la Ciudad, Quito ; Giuseppe
Penone. Nelle mani. Opere dal 1968 al 2008, Tucci Russo
Studio per l’Arte Contemporanea, Torre Pellice
2010 Giuseppe Penone. Nelle mani - In the Hands, De
Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg ; Giuseppe
Penone. Des veines, au ciel, ouvertes, MAC’s Musée des
Arts Contemporains de la Communauté Française de
Belgique au Grand-Hornu, Hornu
2011 Giuseppe Penone, Haunch of Venison, London ;
Giuseppe Penone. Neue Arbeiten, Konrad Fischer Galerie,
Berlin
2012 Giuseppe Penone, Centre d’arts et de nature, Parc
du Château, Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire ; Traversées,
La Fabrique du Pont d’Aleyrac, Saint-Pierreville / Pas d’Panique, Lagorce; Château du Pin, Fabras / Sur le sentier des
lauzes, Saint-Mélany ; Giuseppe Penone, Marian Goodman
Gallery, New York ; Giuseppe Penone. Spazio di Luce, The
Bloomberg Commission, Whitechapel Gallery, London ;
Giuseppe Penone, Haunch of Venison, London ; Giuseppe
Penone. Intersecting Gaze / Sguardo incrociato, Gagosian
Gallery, London
2013 Giuseppe Penone, Kunstmuseum, Winterthur ;
Penone Versailles, Château de Versailles ; Giuseppe
Penone. Alfabeto, Chapelle Saint-Martin-du-Méjan, Arles ;
Giuseppe Penone. Ideas of Stone, Madison Square Park,
New York
2014 Giuseppe Penone. Prospettiva vegetale, Forte di
Belvedere et Giardino di Boboli, Florence ; Giuseppe
Penone. Ramificazioni del Pensiero / Branches of Thought,
Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles ; Breath is a Sculpture,
Beirut Art Center, Beirut ; Giuseppe Penone, Musée de
Grenoble, Grenoble
2015 Giuseppe Penone, Marian Goodman Gallery, New
York
Giuseppe Penone (b. Garessio, Italy, 1947) lives and works in Turin.
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 7
VISITS AND EVENTS
Guided tours
8 October at 12.30 pm
15 October at 6.30 pm
29 October 12.30 pm
19 October at 6.30 pm
3 October at 6.30 pm
10 October 12.30 pm
Tour in sign language
4 October at 3 pm
A collaboration with
(please pre-enrol)
Drawing workshops for adults
14 November, 2 - 5 pm
«L’anatomie de la végétation» – A creative itinary through the exhibition.
With the artist Claudia Renna.
Price : CHF 30.(please pre-enrol)
Lecture
26 November at 8 pm
Giuseppe Penone : le temps des arbres, le temps des pierres, le nôtre
By Didier Semin, Art Historian and Professor, Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
Free
Young visitors
Discovery booklet
Activities in the exhibition
From 6 years, free
Parent-child drawing tour
28 October and 25 November, 2 am – 4.30 pm
Parents are invited to bring along their children and draw the works as a family to spark a discussion about the nature of art.
(please pre-enrol)
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 8
PRESS IMAGES
www.mcba.ch, press relations
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All rights reserved. This reproduction authorisation is agreed on the basis of the following conditions: complete and unaltered reproduction of the works. Full mention of the captions. Web: the site must comprise the following notice: “All rights reserved. Reproduction and all use of the works other than individual and private consultation are forbidden without prior authorisation.”
Verde del bosco con camicia [Forest green with shirt], 1984. Frottage with leaves on canvas, 264,5 x 470 cm.
Photo : Archivio Penone, Turin © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Spazio di luce [Space of light], 2008. Bronze, gold, 8 parts, total dimensions
c. 250 x 2000 x 180 cm. Photo : Archivio Penone, Turin © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 9
Studio per Biforcazione [Study for Bifurcation], 1986
Pencil on paper, 48 x 33 cm
Photo : Archivio Penone, Turin © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Studio per Gesto vegetale [Study for vegetal gesture],
1984. Ink on paper, 63,8 x 94,5 cm. Photo : Archivio
Penone, Turin
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Amedeo Modigliani
Caryatid with Raised Arms, 1913
Pencil on paper, 27 x 21 cm
Progetto per lenti a contatto specchianti – Guardare la strada
[Project of reflecting contact lenses – Looking at the road], 1970.
Pencil on paper, 42 x 27 cm.
Photo : Archivio Penone, Turin © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 10
Le Foglie della pelle [The leaves of the skin], 2004.
Pigments and tape on paper, 48 x 33 cm.
Photo : Archivio Penone, Turin. © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Kasimir Malevitch
Untitled, 1914
Pencil on laid paper, 14,4 x 10,1 cm
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 11
Tre parole dette nello stesso momento [Three words uttered at the
same time], 1968. Ink and pencil on paper, 50 x 35 cm.
Photo : Archivio Penone, Turin © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Giacomo Balla
Disegno del mobile smontabile [Drawing of dismountable furniture], 1920
Pencil on paper maroufloged to canvas, 21,2 x 32,7 cm © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Giuseppe Penone. Regards croisés
Press release
Page 12