News / Giuseppe Penone / Announcements

Giuseppe Penone has been named 2024’s Artist of the Year by Prinsessan Estelles Kulturstiftelse (preks), a foundation established in 2019 by Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel and named for their daughter, Princess Estelle, with the mission of promoting cultural activities in the country. Every year, the chosen artist is invited to create a monumental, site-specific work to be permanently installed within Prinsessan Estelles Skulpturpark, a sculpture park at Royal Djurgården in Stockholm. Penone’s sculpture, The Inner Flow of Life (2022), will be unveiled on May 30, 2024.

Giuseppe Penone has been elected a foreign associate member of the prestigious Académie des beaux-arts, one of five institutions comprising the Institut de France. Penone joins ten other foreign members, taking the seat previously held by the late Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow. The artist’s induction ceremony took place on October 18, 2023.

Dedicated to the fine arts, the Académie des beaux-arts encourages artistic creation and ensures the defense of France’s cultural heritage by awarding prizes to both emerging and recognized artists, organizing competitions, funding artist residencies, and granting aid to artistic projects, events, and associations. As an advisory body to the French public authorities, it is organized around the notion of multidisciplinarity, bringing together members within eight different artistic sections, foreign associate members, and corresponding members.

Giuseppe Penone has given the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Centre Pompidou in Paris major gifts of works on paper. Each institution received more than three hundred pieces spanning five decades of the artist’s career, beginning in the late 1960s. The work reflects the artist’s wide range of influences and the connections he draws between humans and nature in exploring the involuntary processes of breathing, growth, and aging through materials such as stones, branches, and leaves. Both institutions plan to have exhibitions by Penone in 2022.

Brown University will bestow an honorary doctorate of fine arts to Giuseppe Penone for his work as a visual artist on Sunday, May 27, 2018, during its 250th commencement ceremony.

Unveiling November 11, 2017
Louvre Abu Dhabi
www.louvreabudhabi.ae

Giuseppe Penone’s Germination, a permanent site-specific commission for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, will be unveiled in the museum’s courtyard on November 11. The four-part installation reveals the artist’s fascination with the use of organic materials, such as trees, to highlight the connection between man, nature, and art. The central element of the installation is Leaves of Light, a vast bronze tree which interacts with Jean Nouvel’s architectural design through mirrors placed on its branches.

The American Academy in Rome has announced that Giuseppe Penone will receive the prestigious 2017 McKim Medal on June 7. This is an annual prize that honors individuals whose work exemplifies creative and intellectual exchange and who have contributed significantly to the arts and humanities on an international level. Past recipients include Cy Twombly, Renzo Piano, Umberto Eco, Miuccia Prada, and Bernardo Bertolucci.