visions that his sensibility has given him, to produce the sights, the images necessary to collective imaginings." During this period, Penone carried out his work on traces and imprints obtained using various procedures, all based on contact. They range from the technique of the mold or cast to different actions based on exerting pressure. In Svolgere la propria pelle ("Developing One's Own Skin"), a 1970 artwork published the following year in the form of an artist's book, Penone recorded the boundary of his body with hundreds of photos taken by superimposing a sheet of glass on his skin. "The animal image, the imprint is involuntary culture. It has the intelligence of the material, a universal intelligence, an intelligence of the flesh of the material of man. The imprint of the whole epidermis of one's body, a leap into the air, a plunge into water, the body covered with earth. Developing one's skin against the air, water, earth, rock, walls, trees, dogs, handrails, windows, roads, hair, hats, handies, wings, doors, seats, stairs, clothes, books, eyes, sheep, mushrooms, grass, skin ... " wrote the artist, reflecting on the quantity of voluntary and involuntary signs that bodies disseminate and spread on different things: the neon lights in a gallery, the panes of glass in a window at the Kunsthalle in Kassel at "Documenta 5" in 1972, on a stone in Svolgere la propria pelle/pietra ("Developing One's Own Skin/Stone") of 1971, or on the fingers in Svolgere la propria pelle/dita ("Developing One's Own Skin/Finger") of the same year. Penone's purpose is to produce the work starting from an image as automatic and unconscious as a fingerprint, and to make it conscious and voluntary through the irreplaceable action of drawing, which enlarges it and retraces it in all its art. Other examples are the cycles titled Pressione ("Pressure") begun in 1974 and Palpebre ("Eyelids") in 1975. The procedure adopted by the artist is articulated in different phases: making strips of adhesive tape adhere to his skin sprinkled with black, or pressure imprinting his own body or spreading a fine layer of resin on his eyelids and then photographing the image derived from the contact, projecting it enlarged onto paper or other surfaces, where it is transcribed in charcoal or pencil and with another act of contact, which the artist exerts by drawing. In some cases the work, which is the projection of the skin of