I colori della Musa, 2021
GPE-0149
The Colours of the Muse
Plaster relief and Murano glass
50 x 40 x 4 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the verso: “”I colori della Musa” / Giulio Paolini / 2021”(editions 1/6, 3/6); “”I colori / della Musa” / Giulio Paolini / 2021” (editions 2/6, 4/6, 5/6, 6/6, both Artist’s proofs, both Production proofs)
Autograph numbering on the verso
6 in Arabic numerals from 1/6 to 6/6
3 unnumbered artist’s proofs
2 unnumbered production proofs
Each edition is distinguished by the different configuration and arrangement of the glass fragments, which vary in terms of number, shape, colour, and size.
Vetreria Venini, Murano
Gipsoteca Mondazzi, Turin
The multiple was commissioned from the artist by the glass company Venini, Murano – since 2020 headed by Silvia Damiani – on the occasion of its one-hundredth anniversary.
Wooden crate, blank, 53 x 63 x 17 cm.
An oval relief in plaster in Neoclassical style features a crouching female figure, her head encircled by a diadem, intent on drawing or painting. In variable parts of the relief polychrome fragments of Murano glass have been applied, differing in shape, colour, and size from one edition to another of the edition size.
The female profile recalls the mythological figure of the Muse, the embodiment of the supreme ideal of Art, intent here on observing, holding, or dispersing traces of colour. The fragments, the artist explains, "are from the palette, which is also oval in shape, of Édouard Manet, an object that had already aroused the wonder of Eugène Delacroix when he defined it ‘une fête pour l’œil’ (a feast for the eyes)”1. In this sense, the “colours of the Muse” – as the title tells us – symbolically allude to the painter's palette, and celebrate the primacy of painting.
The same theme was developed in a composite work on paper, with the same title, made during the same period (GPC-1038).
The mutiple was commissioned from the artist along with another relief, similar in type, but different as concerns the subject, titled Planetario (GPE-0150).
1 G. Paolini in conversation with B. Della Casa, July 2021.
Female nude with pen, Neoclassical period.
| 2022 | Milan, Galleria Christian Stein, Giulio Paolini. La Musa in laguna, 20-29 January; editions 1/6, 2/6, 3/6, 4/6, 5/6, 6/6. |
