Giuseppe Penone is an Italian artist. He attended the Turin Academy of Fine Arts, where he met Giovanni Anselmo and Michelangelo Pistoletto, with whom he joined the Arte Povera movement in 1967. From the outset, Penone based his work on the relationship between man and nature and between the human body and matter. This interaction between man and nature is the central theme of a series of works in which Penone intervened in the growing process of trees, as one of the central elements of his artistic research. In 2007 he was invited to represent Italy at the 52nd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, and in 2014 the Japan Art Association awarded him the Praemium Imperiale prize.