Propagazioni: Giuseppe Penone at Sèvres

This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Propagazioni: Giuseppe Penone at Sèvres at Frick Madison, the temporary home of the Frick Collection, New York. It documents an installation of eleven porcelain disks that Penone produced during his 2013 collaboration with the Sèvres manufactory in France, as part of the Propagazioni (Propagation) series he began in 1995. Each disk elaborates on the imprint—one of which is in gold—of one of the Italian sculptor’s fingertips, and the grouping was shown in a gallery adjacent to the Frick’s early Italian paintings on gold grounds.

In addition to photographs of the works and installation, the book also features an introduction by Ian Wardropper, director of the Frick Collection; two illustrated essays, “‘But There on the Shining Shield’: Giuseppe Penone’s Propagazioni at the Frick” by critic Xavier F. Salomon, and “Propagazioni in Porcelain: Ripples of Thought after a Conversation with Giuseppe Penone” by Giulio Dalvit, assistant curator of sculpture at the Frick Collection; and a bibliography on the artist.