On 3 April 2018, the Atrium of the General Staff building was the venue for a public discussion between the famous contemporary artist Giuseppe Penone, one of the members of the Italian Arte Povera movement, and the curators Dmitry Ozerkov and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
On the same day, Giuseppe Penone’s installation Ideas of Stone – 1372 kg of Light was inaugurated in the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace, while the artist celebrated his birthday.
The discussion was held in Italian – as Mikhail Piotrovsky said, “it could not be otherwise in buildings designed by Rossi and Rastrelli.”
Giuseppe Penone, a poet of trees, an artist who has found a powerful means of expression in a very personal interpretation of nature, spoke about “what happens when a tree encounters a human hand”. From discussion of the work that has been brought to St Petersburg, the idea behind it, its embodiment and conceptual connection with the setting of the Winter Palace, the artist moved on to broader topics: the role of the material and its sacral nature, minimalism and “memorization in wood”, the special language of art “that is able to persuade even with small forms”. Dmitry Ozerkov and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev spoke about the artist’s oeuvre from a curatorial point of view.
At the end of the meeting, the artist was asked about his sources of inspiration. He stated that the roots of his art “go deep into the Italian soil, penetrating through all its complex cultural layers, while the nourishing force for their growth is not copying, but cognition.” In his opinion “it is vital to begin a dialogue of different cultures, but that dialogue should be simple – best suited to that is the universal language of Arte Povera, living art that, despite marking its fiftieth anniversary, is still developing, being a living current.”
And that dialogue was begun: on the day when Penone’s “tree” was set up in the courtyard of the Winter Palace, the sun started to shine on springtime St Petersburg.
The installation of Ideas of Stone – 1372 kg of Light and the public discussion come ahead of the exhibition Arte Povera. A Creative Revolution that opens in May 2018 and will be accompanied by an extensive educational programme devised by the Hermitage’s Youth Centre.