Copia dal vero, 1975
GPO-0303
Copy from Life
Pencil on primed canvas and on reversed canvas
Three parts 80 x 80 cm each, overall dimensions 80 x 245 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso, upper stretcher bar: "Giulio Paolini Copia dal vero / 1975"
Massimo De Carlo, Milan
Three square canvases placed at short intervals from each other feature the proportionally reduced drawing of themselves. The one in the middle, which is reversed, finds a "life-like" correspondence with the canvas viewed from the recto, on which a drawing "copies" the profile of the stretcher.
In the artist's own words: “What the drawing inside each of the three canvases tends to copy, to refer, is none other than the surface on which it is about to be delineated. A transcription, therefore, far-removed from the suspicion of the interpretation: a reading of the space, before being a drawing, that does not presume to transcend the truth to which it is applied, that is, the original space of the painting. The pencil drawing, and the canvas itself, each preserve their own differences in dimensions and quality, in the sense that the lines develop within the canvas in a reduced proportion and naturally have a conventional and visual nature that is drawn. But what also exists, between the two dimensions, is an affinity that is apparent from the moment that the one and the other do not aim for reciprocal imitation”.1
The same theme was formulated in five other variants made during the same year (GPO-0278, GPO-0306, GPO-0307, GPO-0316, GPO-0321).
1 G. Paolini, Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), p. 50.
| 1975 | Rome, Galleria D’Alessandro-Ferranti, Giulio Paolini, from 11 October. |
| 1977 | New York, Sperone-Westwater-Fischer, Giulio Paolini, 15 January - 15 February. |
| 1979 | New York, Banco (Galleria Massimo Minini) c/o Hal Bromm Gallery, Alighiero Boetti, Paolo Icaro, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Michele Zaza, 10 March - 7 April. |
| 1989 | New York, Sperone Westwater, Early Conceptual Works: Barry, Boetti, Buren, Huebler, Kosuth, Paolini, Weiner, January. |
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), p. 50. |
| • | M. Fagiolo, “Glossario”, in Giulio Paolini (Parma: Università di Parma, Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, 1976), p. 16, repr. no. 197. |
| • | G. Paolini, Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), repr. p. 50 (exhibition view Rome 1975). |
| • | Gian Enzo Sperone. Torino Roma New York 35 anni di mostre tra Europa e America, vol. 2 (Turin: Hopefulmonster editore, 2000), col. repr. pp. 282, 372 (exhibition view New York 1989). |
| • | A. Zevi, Peripezie del dopoguerra nell’arte italiana (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2005), p. 363 (in general on the group of works titled “Copia dal vero”), not repr. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 303 p. 313, col. repr. |
| • | F. Guzzetti, “D come disegno. Della regola e dell’invenzione”, in Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), pp. 67-68, col. repr. p. 67. |
