La Musa (all’orizzonte), 2016
GPO-1054
The Muse (on the Horizon)
Plaster high-relief, pencil and red pencil on paper applied to primed canvas
100 x 140 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the verso, upper stretcher bar, centre: “ “La Musa (all’orizzonte)” Giulio Paolini 2016”
Private collection
An imaginary perspective – drawn on two sheets placed close together and applied to a primed canvas – acts as a background to the high-relief in plaster positioned in the area corresponding to the horizon line. The Neoclassical female figure is intent on drawing, as suggested by the two rectangles outlined in pencil and askew, and by the intersection of red diagonals.
As the title tells us the female figure is a Muse, viewed by Paolini as a "source of inspiration and guide for the artist".1 Its gesture, associated with the drawing of the squares and the diagonals, emphasizes the becoming of a work as a core theme, elevated by Paolini to a conceptual paradigm of his work ever since his very first painting, Disegno geometrico (1960), symbolically recalled by the red diagonals.
The same theme was reformulated in 2019, in two other larger variants distinguished by the different motif of rectangles or squares correlated with the Muse (GPO-1079, GPO-1085).
1 G. Paolini in conversation with Bettina Della Casa, 11 June 2019.
Female nude with pen, Neoclassical period.
| 2019 | Mombarcaro (Cuneo), Lunetta 11, In corso, 22 June - 10 November, no catalogue. |
| 2024 | New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, Your Patience Is Appreciated. An Inaugural Show, 26 October - 21 December, col. repr. (catalogue in the form of loose postcards about the works exhibited). |
