Soffio

Soffio is part of a larger ensemble, commenced in 1977, based on the relationship of the artist’s body to space through the manifestation of his breath. It takes the form of a large terracotta amphora, bearing inside it the imprint of the artist’s legs, chest and mouth, as though he had, from a fully upright position, projected his breath into a bag of clay, thus recording the deployment of his respiration. Created through a montage of casts of the various parts of Penone’s body – even the interior of his mouth – and of models of the coils of respiration, Soffio aims to be the very embodiment of the artist’s breath, in its physicality as much as its mythological symbolism. It is the breath of life, both anima and pneuma, responsible for the creation of the universe and the human being, as well as an evocation of the Botticellian Zephyr, clearly evoked in the artist’s drawings.

Soffio renders the invisible visible; it is a sculpture of energy as it is being deployed, as well as manifesting the relationship between interior and exterior: ‘When we breathe, there is a volume of air that goes back into space, which is different from the volume of air around us, and that volume of air is a sculpture – a sculpture that lasts an instant, but is already a sculpture’, Penone has written. 

The fragility and ductility of the terracotta responds to that of air, resonating with Penone’s fascination with resemblances between the spontaneous work of the body and the intentional work of an artist: the body ‘sculpts’ the air that enters and exits through it, just as the potter’s hands give shape to a form.