Essere fiume (to be a river) - Giuseppe Penone
The creative process required to "be a river" is described by the artist himself in 1980: "extracting a carved stone from the river, going backwards along the river, discovering the point on the mountain from which the stone came, extracting a new block of stone from the mountain, repeating exactly the stone extracted from the river in the new block of stone is being a river". The work is to detach a mass of stone from the mountain and work it, making it identical to the stone taken from the river, whose specific shape is the result of its exposure to running water and a series of different natural accidents: rolling, collision with other stones, corrosive action of the earth dragged by the water. It can therefore be concluded that "producing a stone of stone is perfect sculpture, it is part of nature, it is cosmic heritage, pure creation, the naturalness of good sculpture, it takes on a cosmic value. Being a river is the true stone sculpture".
