In Giuseppe Penone’s Sculptures, Humankind and Nature Are One

In Giuseppe Penone’s Sculptures, Humankind and Nature Are One

Penone wears his own clothing throughout.For well over half a century, trees have been Giuseppe Penone’s muse and medium—or, as he puts it, “the perfect sculptures.” Housed in a concrete-floor, former 1950s metals warehouse along Turin’s Dora Riparia River, his studio has cinderblock walls, thirty-six-foot ceilings, and a bridge crane to accommodate the timber beams and carved wooden trunks for which the artist is known. A majestic, double-heigh…