Copia dal vero, 1975
GPO-0307
Copy from Life
Pencil on primed canvas and on reversed canvas
Three parts 30 x 20 cm each, overall dimensions 30 x 61.5 cm
Signed, titled and dated on the verso of the third canvas: “Giulio Paolini” (upper stretcher bar, right), “Copia dal vero / 1975” (lower stretcher bar, centre)
Private collection, courtesy Repetto Gallery
The three canvases should be placed close together so that the gap between them is hardly visible.
Three rectangular canvases placed close together – the one in the middle is reversed – feature the proportionally reduced drawing of themselves.
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-0303, GPO-0306, GPO-0316, GPO-0321).
1 G. Paolini, Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), p. 50.
| 1990 | Turin, Galleria In Arco, Arte Povera, 14 June - 15 September, cat. no. 31, repr. n. pag. |
| 2013 | Milan, Galleria Toselli, Opere d'arte, 6-30 April. |
| 2016 | Pra Sec, Val Ferret (Courmayeur), Les Maisons de Judith, L’incanto del bianco, 23 July - 24 august, no catalogue. |
| 2016 | London, Repetto Gallery, Metamorphosis: the Alchemists of Matter. A Point of View on Arte Povera, 5 October - 2 November, col. repr. p. 41. |
| 2022 | Monforte d’Alba (Cuneo), Castello di Perno, Giulio Paolini O.D.E., 29 October - 19 November, col. repr. p. 140. |
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), p. 50. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 307 p. 317, col. repr. |
