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Autoritratto come marionetta, 1992

GPO-0692

Self-Portrait as a Puppet

Primed canvases, pencil and red pencil on wall, stretchers, men’s jacket, rolled up canvas

Dismantled work

The drawing outlined on the wall recalls a room in perspective, with several "paintings" lined up at the viewer's eye level (four drawn squares and a primed canvas). An overturned canvas hanging at the bottom of the wall, overlapping and staggered in relation to a drawn square, simulates a painting on the ground propped up against the back wall of a virtual room. At the point where the diagonals marked in red pencil intersect, a cut-out square simulates a "case" with respect to the plinth outlined in the foreground of the drawing. This cut-out also recalls a puppet theatre, animated by several elements hanging behind the cut-out empty square: two disassembled stretchers with their crossbars arranged so that they evoke vaguely anthropomorphic features, a men's jacket stuck between the two stretchers, and a canvas rolled in the manner of a scroll evoke a "self-portrait as a marionette".

1992 Kassel, Documenta-Halle, Documenta IX, 30 June - 20 September, not repr.
“‘documenta als Motor’. Ein Rundgang durch die DOCUMENTA IX, kommentiert von Jan Hoet”, in Kunstforum International 119 (Ruppichteroth), 1992, p. 373, col. repr. p. 374.
M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 692 p. 706, col. repr.
Entry by Maddalena Disch, 06/05/2026