The Alberi in versi by Giuseppe Penone at the Uffizi Gallery

More than 30 works can be viewed along the Gallery's itinerary through October 3

The famous line from Paradise of the Divine Comedy "The tree that lives from the top" is the guiding metaphor of Alberi in versi, the exhibition of the artist Giuseppe Penone hosted in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence from July 6 to October 3.

Respirare l'ombra - Giuseppe Penone

More than thirty works, including sculptures, installations, drawings and engravings, scattered along the path of the Gallery that are a tribute to Dante in the seven hundred years since his death, and retrace the central themes of the artist's work.

Artemide - Giuseppe Penone

The exhibition is inspired by the plant symbolism, the tree has always been for Penone archetype of sculpture and living matter, similar to that of the human body. At
At the same time the artist has chosen plants as the common denominator of an investigation into the ambivalent relationship between inside-outside, positive-negative, human-vegetal, art-nature. To the principle of "inverse" are also closely related the techniques used by the artist, the cast and the imprint: processes that imply contact, thanks to which different bodies and materials exchange form and substance, in a continuity without hierarchies between human and non-human.

In the Wood - Giuseppe Penone

The path of the exhibition, chosen by the artist himself, begins with works from the late sixties up to the most recent ones made in 2020.

The exhibition also addresses the city and the outside of the museum, and had been anticipated last March 25, on the occasion of Dantedì, by the inauguration in Piazza della Signoria of a Fir tree, a monumental installation of steel and bronze of more than 22 meters.

Tree - Giuseppe Penone

"Reverse trees are the vital flows. They raise the vegetables of the world that twist in the air attracted by light, they are the whirlwinds of water and matter that precipitates towards the center of the earth, they are present in the spirals of the columns of Santa Maria del Fiore, they are the thoughts that form the memory of our experience, roots that feed our body," said the artist Giuseppe Pennone.

Giuseppe Penone and Eike Schmidt