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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, 07/10/2026