L’ombra del bronzo / The Shadow of Bronze

After a thorough analysis of the historical and topographical conditions, Giuseppe Penone installed his work L’ombra del bronzo / The Shadow of Bronze as part of his exhibition at the Museum Kurhaus Kleve. The sculpture is a 16-meter-tall, highly realistic bronze casting of a cedar tree trunk with the branches cut off. There is a small holly tree growing in a narrow door-like opening in the trunk. The dead bronze trunk, which was robbed of its branches, provides space and shade for the young blooming plant. In cutting the trunk open, Penone has opened up the heart of the tree and revealed a tender sapling. The piece that was once there has been placed beside it as a counterpart to the fresh holly.
L’ombra del bronzo is highly characteristic of Giuseppe Penone’s work. The sculpture powerfully emphasizes the historical significance of the Klever Gärten. The gardens have been home to a dialogue between nature and art since the middle of the 17th century, when Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen created the trend-setting Baroque park. Penone’s work in the Forstgarten continues this dialogue from a contemporary perspective. When Stephan Balkenhol’s Neue Eiserne Mann / New Iron Man was added to the baroque section of the park in 2004, it emphasized the specific character of its surroundings. Likewise, L’ombra del bronzo is in line with the Forstgarten’s botanical collection and accentuates its particular qualities in new and surprising ways. Just as the New Iron Man brings the Baroque era to mind, Penone’s sculpture also represents the growth and shade found in the 19th century landscape garden. The two works both extend notions of history into the present in their own way — much in the spirit of the Klever Gärten’s founder Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen.
The acquisition was made possible by the generous involvement of numerous members of the Freundeskreis Museum Kurhaus und Koekkoek-Haus Kleve e. V., the state of NRW, the Kunststiftung NRW, the city of Kleve, the Sparkasse Kleve, and the Volksbank Kleverland.

Original German text: Dr. Roland Mönig, from the collection. Giuseppe Penone, L’ombra del bronzo / Der Schatten der Bronze, 2002, Forstgarten Kleve, from: Museums Reporter no. 10. “Aktuelles vom Freundeskreis aus dem Museum Kurhaus und dem B. C. Koekkoek-Haus Kleve,” ed. by the Freundeskreis Museum Kurhaus und Koekkoek-Haus Kleve e. V., Kleve 2007, p. 3