Non finito, 1989-90
GPO-0674
Unfinished
Collage and pencil inscription on lithographic print, plexiglas sheet, easel
Collage and plexiglas sheet 84.5 x 60 cm each
Private collection, Bergamo
The "unfinished" painting on an easel presents a photographic reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh's Self-Portrait (1890) strewn with the images of other paintings, made between 1890 and 1990, and marked at the bottom by a handwritten caption that says: "for Vincent Van Gogh / Unfinished (one hundred fragments of one hundred paintings / painted from 1890 to the present time reveal, / one hundred years later, the self-portrait / of the painter)".
In the artist’s own words: "If the fragments, intended as 'brushstrokes', numbered one hundred, they would end up covering the entire surface of the painting, which only then would be finished. The reproduction of the Self-Portrait is very light, so that it evokes the idea of a sinopia: as if the image of Van Gogh surfaced from history, from the fragments of the one hundred paintings that came after him. The squaring, due to the technical impossibility at the time of realizing a single large-format photocopy, also recalls the search for an image through the viewfinder of an optical device".1
The work can be traced back to the print edition from the same period with the same title, commissioned for the poster of the 100th anniversary of Van Gogh's death (GPE-0070).
1 G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2005), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 674 p. 686.
Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait de l’artiste, 1889, oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
| 1990 | Bologna, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, Villa delle Rose, Giulio Paolini. Hotel de l’Univers, 27 May - 29 July, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 14 p. 17, repr. pp. 49, 57 (exhibition views). |
| 2009 | Alzano Lombardo, Spazio Fausto Radici, Una collezione trasversale. Da Duchamp a Nino Calos, da Cattelan a Entang Wiharso, from 27 June, no catalogue. |
| 2022-23 | Bergamo, Palazzo della Ragione, Arte in opera, 11 November 2022 - 29 January 2023, no catalogue. |
| • | G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2005), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 674 p. 686. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 674 p. 686, col. repr. |
