Giuseppe Penone was born in 1947 in Garessio, a village near Cuneo (Piedmont, Italy), lives and works in Turin and regularly stays in Paris. It was in Turin that he exhibited for the first time, at the Deposito d’Arte Presente, and later at the gallery owned by Gian Enzo Sperone, where he had his first solo show in 1969. Penone’s work reveals the interconnected nature of everything that exists. He achieves this through the concrete (visual, tactile and olfactory) aspects of matter, which he explores until he uncovers its magical primal essence. Even in his very earliest pieces, the artist experimented with a number of different materials (lead, iron, wax, pitch, wood, plaster and jute) bringing their individual physical qualities to the fore.