Carnet, 1976
GPO-0325
Sketch Book
Pencil on primed canvas and on paper, collage on reversed canvas
60 x 80 cm (two parts 60 x 40 cm each)
Signed and dated on the verso of the second canvas, lower stretcher bar, left: “Giulio Paolini 1976”
Tommaso Fontana Collection, Rome
The representation consisting of both a collage and a pencil drawing on two canvases arranged close together – one viewed from the verso, the other from the recto – reproduces a hand that is drawing amidst scattered sheets.
"This painting is the illustration of two open pages represented by the two canvases next to each other: the one to the left (the reversed canvas) is already turned over, the one to the right (the canvas viewed from the recto) is offered up for the observation. The division into two parts, which distinguishes the material image plane (the objects held down on the overturned canvas) from the graphic representation (the drawing on the other canvas), alludes to the complementary nature of the one and the other version of the image",1 the artist explains.
Scattered on the reversed canvas are the last page of the print edition Ennesima (appunti per la descrizione di sei disegni datati 1975) (1975, GPE-0017), a typewritten page containing a commentary on the same work, and a crumpled sheet of paper.
1 G. Paolini in conversation with Maurizio Calvesi at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, 6 April 1976; the typescript is held in the artist's archive; the formulation was revised by the artist in 2007.
| • | T. Fontana, Il vissuto dell’arte. Quarant’anni di collezione (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2006), col. repr. p. 90. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 325 p. 334, col. repr. |
