In assenza, 2021
GPE-0145
Absent
Xerox reproduction and original coloured pencils drawing by the artist
27 x 19 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the verso of each plate, centre: “ “In assenza” / Giulio Paolini / 2021”
Autograph numbering on the verso of each plate, centre
20 in Roman numerals from I/XX to XX/XX
7 unnumbered artist’s proofs
Each edition is distinguished by a different drawing in coloured pencils by the author.
Edizioni Peccolo, Livorno
The print was produced by Edizioni Peccolo, Livorno – directed by Roberto Peccolo – on the occasion of the publication of the book by Paolini titled In assenza. The book is the seventh in the series Pittura e memoria, created by Peccolo in 2001. The first six volumes were conceived by René Laubiès, Winfred Gaul, Lucio Pozzi, Michael Goldberg, Ettore Sordini, and Georges Noël.
Giulio Paolini, In assenza (Livorno: Edizioni Peccolo, 2021). Pittura e memoria series, 33.5 x 23.5 cm, 40 pages, paper binding. Text by the author and sixteen colour plates. Limited edition of 90 signed copies in Arabic numerals, and 20 signed copies in Roman numerals; the copies in Roman numerals include the print edition.
The colophon of the book includes information regarding the edition size of the print. Numbering and signature at the centre.
Text by the artist, In assenza, on his approach to art and in reference to the plates reproduced in the volume.
The print presents a front-view half-length portrait of a faceless male figure, his right hand placed behind his head, in a contemplative pose. Visible in the foreground, that is, in what is presumed to be the visual field of the figure, is a coloured drawing. In each copy of the edition size it differs, alternating and combining various geometric forms, frames, and lines (circles, rhombuses, squares, diagonals, median axes) in different ways.
Anonymous and detached, the protagonist (a stand-in for the author) plays the role of the viewer, stationary and silent. The author who has exited the scene – as the title tells us – leaves room for the work, that is, to the endless ways of imagining it, to the height of its countless hypotheses.
The title In assenza is also that of the work consisting of sixteen original collages reproduced in the book of the same name for which the print was created (GPO-1111).
