Ebla, 1977-78
GPO-0392
Collage on oil-painted wooden panel
140 x 127 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso, centre: “Giulio Paolini / Ebla / 1977-78”
Roberto Casamonti collection, Florence
The title “Ebla”, borrowed from the name of an ancient city (destroyed midway through the second millennium BC and located in the territory of present-day Syria) marks a series of works made between 1977 and 1978 in sixteen [?] variants, divided into two groups with different formats: twelve [?] works measuring 99 x 89 cm each (from GPO-0355 to GPO-0366) and four measuring 140 x 127 cm each (from GPO-0390 to GPO-0393). The technique used – a collage on a wooden panel that the artist had painted so that it resembled marble – is always the same, while the colour of the marbling, the arrangement and the iconography of the fragments of the reproductions of ancient marble artefacts vary. The traces that peer out indistinctly between the faux veining are, in the words of the artist, meant to be "the pre-existing soul in the material destined to reveal itself as a work of art".1
This version features a fragment of the colour reproduction of a marble colonnade seen in perspective, applied to the centre of a reddish marbleized panel.
1 G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2001), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 355 p. 365.
| 1986 | Venice, Giardini di Castello, Biennale di Venezia: XLII Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte. Arte e scienza, 29 June - 28 September, general catalogue: cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 130, not repr.; catalogue Wunderkammer: cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 38, col. repr. p. 51. |
| 2012-13 | Florence, Tornabuoni Arte, Maestri moderni e contemporanei. Antologia scelta 2013, from 30 November 2012, pp. 180-181, col. repr. p. 181. |
| 2015 | Florence, Tornabuoni Arte, Il dado è tratto. Arte contemporanea italiana oltre la tradizione, 25 September - 28 November, col. repr. p. 171 (erroneously dated “1976-77”). |
| 2016-17 | Florence, Tornabuoni Arte, Arte moderna e contemporanea. Antologia scelta 2017, 2 December 2016 - 25 November 2017, caption with full description p. 192, col. repr. p. 193 (erroneously dated “1976-77”). |
| 2019-22 | Florence, Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni, Collezione Roberto Casamonti. Dagli anni ’60 agli inizi del XXI secolo, 26 May 2019 - January 2022, col. repr. p. 45, entry p. 44 (erroneously dated “1976-77”), referred to in the text by B. Corà p. 23 (erroneously dated “1967-1977”). |
| • | G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2001), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 355 p. 365. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 392 p. 398, col. repr. |
| • | Maestri moderni e contemporanei. Antologia scelta 2013 (Florence: Tornabuoni Arte, 2012), caption including complete description p. 180, col. repr. p. 181. |
