Equivalenza, 1975
GPO-0280
Equivalence
Pencil, collage and nails on primed canvas
160 x 240 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the first canvas, upper stretcher bar, left: "Giulio Paolini / Equivalenza 1975"
Banca d’Italia Collection
Four primed canvases joined at the back to form a single large painting feature the drawing of three paintings seen in perspective (the likeness is reinforced by the real nails placed along the vertical sides). The collage included in the vanishing point of the drawing is made up of a multitude of fragments torn from colour photographs of the artist's previous works.
“My use of perspective is an artifice, an attempt to create a distance with the presence of the painting as such. This artifice, made evident, gives me a chance to move the scene of the work away from the physical limit of vision, and to acknowledge the existence of a curtain that appears before our eyes”,1 Paolini remarks.
The same theme was developed in three other variants made during the same year (GPO-0279, GPO-0281, GPO-0282).
1 G. Paolini interviewed by F. Pasini, in L’Illustrazione italiana 5, no. 24 (Milan), November, 1985, p. 21 (statement revisited by the artist); republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 207-208.
| 2022 | Venice, Banca d’Italia, Palazzo Dolfin Manin, Omaggio a Venezia. Opere dalla collezione della Banca d’Italia, 30 September 2022 - 8 January 2023, col. repr. p. 17. |
| • | G. Paolini in the interview with F. Pasini, in L’Illustrazione italiana 5, no. 24 (Milan), November, 1985, p. 21; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 207-208. |
| • | I. Calvino, “Equarrissage. Giulio Paolini”, in Opus International 59 (Paris), May, 1976, repr. p. 43; French translation of the essay published in G. Paolini, Idem (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1975), not repr. |
| • | Arte moderna. L’arte contemporanea dal secondo dopoguerra ad oggi, vol. 37 (Milan: Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori, 2001), p. 316, repr. p. 317. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 280 p. 291, col. repr. |
