Giuseppe Penone’s major exhibition opens at the National Museum of Qatar

The Giuseppe Penone exhibition The Inner Flow of Life is on view at the National Museum of Qatar in Doha, bringing together more than 50 works dating from 1969 to the present. Spanning sculpture, drawing, installation and photography, the exhibition examines the intricate relationships between the human body, natural materials and the forces shaping the world.

A landscape of materials and forms

Co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Issa Al Shirawi, the exhibition occupies the museum’s Baraha and Old Palace. Five custom-built pavilions reshape the central courtyard, each dedicated to a material central to Penone’s practice: leaves, porcelain, thorns, marble and leather. Models, studies, drawings, photographs and sketches trace the evolution of his artistic language across five decades.

From Rovesciare i propri occhi (Reversing One’s Eyes, 1970) to the recent Vene di bronzo (Bronze Veins, 2026), the exhibition explores touch, growth, pressure and memory. Working with wood, iron, bronze, clay and marble, Penone reveals the poetry of natural processes through sculptural gestures, blurring the boundaries between organic forms and human creation.

Extending beyond the museum, Idee di Pietra (Ideas of Stone, 2010–24) is permanently installed at Old Doha Port. Comprising two monumental bronze trees bearing river stones, the sculpture juxtaposes the vitality of tree forms with the weight and endurance of stone, reflecting on nature and the passage of time.

Across the exhibition and outdoor installation, Penone reveals an extraordinary sensitivity to the physical character of materials and the spaces they inhabit. The Inner Flow of Life invites visitors to reconsider nature not as a distant spectacle, but as an active force shaping our perception of the world.