Visita privata, 2022
GPE-0156
Private Visit
Fine Art print
Felix Schoeller Matte 230 g
32 x 45 cm
Signed and dated on the recto: “Giulio Paolini” (bottom right), “7/ 9 / 2022” (top centre, in the white tondo)
Autograph numbering on the recto, bottom left, on the circular drawing
35 in Arabic numerals from 1/35 to 35/35
15 in Roman numerals from I/XV to XV/XV
Danilo Montanari Editore, Ravenna
The print is part of the production of multiplied art by the publisher Danilo Montanari, Ravenna, from 1980 to 1993 director of the Agenzia Editoriale Essegi. The catalogue of publications includes books, multiples, and graphic editions by contemporary artists created in close collaboration with the authors.
Tri-fold white card stock folder with bottom flap, closed format 46 x 33.5 cm; cover with titles in black (author, title, publisher). Contains the plate, the colophon printed on the bottom flap, and a text by the artist on the fifth side.
Includes information regarding the printing technique, type of paper, edition size, publisher, and date of printing (September 2022).
Note by the artist, Visita privata, referring to the subject of the print.
The artist's studio, reproduced in the background, hosts the "private visit" of four figures of reference who are particularly dear to Paolini: from left to right Italo Calvino, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, and Jorge Luis Borges. The cosmic images and the circular shapes scattered all around – including the face of a clock – amplify in a symbolic key the ideal and imaginary dimension of the scene, extraneous to the coordinates of the contingent world.
In the artist's own words: “Illustrious, beloved figures, reunited here in my studio: the photographic memento of an encounter that never happened. Italo Calvino, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Jorge Luis Borges captured in a timeless instant, suspended in memory, portrayed ‘from life' i.e. truthfully. From what of truth still remains".1
The print represents a variant of the work on paper with the same title made in 2021 (GPC-2108). The original collage the print is based on is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-2164.
1 G. Paolini in the note included in the portfolio containing the print.
• Figures: portrait of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, photographer unknown, 1984; reproduction from L. Baranelli, E. Ferrero, Album Calvino (Milan: Oscar Mondadori, 1995), p. 311, “Calvino e Borges all’Hotel Excelsior, Roma, 1984”); portrait of Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana taken by Harry Shunk and János Kender at the exhibition of Fontana’s Nature, Paris, Galerie Iris Clert, November 1961.
• Background image: view of Giulio Paolini's studio taken by Agostino Osio, 2018.
• Image of the timepiece from Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Robert Clairborne, Quarta dimensione: tempo (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1967), p. 8 (”L’ora ufficiale americana”).
| • | G. Paolini, Visita privata, note to the work included with the print edition. |
