Comédie Italienne, 1991
GPO-0690
Collage on paper in coloured frames
Nine framed parts 34 x 34 cm each, overall dimensions 170 x 170 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the verso of the ninth element, centre: “Comédie Italienne / Giulio Paolini / 1991”
Private collection, Sorrento
The nine elements arranged at regular intervals so that they form a large lozenge-shaped square repeat the same photographic reproduction of a detail of the painting Les Polichinelles peintres (ca. 1750) by Hubert Robert, in which Pulcinella appears in the role of a painter (this explains the French title, which indicates the “Commedia dell’arte” of which Pulcinella was a stock character, "Comédie Italienne", as it was referred to in other countries). From one element to another the reproduction features a different dominant tone, and it is rotated 90° and mounted in a frame of a different colour. Each time, the canvas that the painter is painting is cut out, and one of its details is added in an element of a different colour, along with a white or black square.
An assorted itinerary with no beginning and no end produces an iridescent mosaic around the motif of the painter at work: a painting of "paintings" evoking the very making of a painting.
Hubert Robert, Les Polichinelles peintres, c. 1760, oil on wood, 16.5 x 22 cm, Musée de Picardie, Amiens.
| 1992 | Naples, Galleria Lucio Amelio, Giulio Paolini. La Commedia dell’Arte, from 31 January. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 690 p. 704, col. repr. |
| • | Claudio Abate. Un progetto di Germano Celant (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2023), col. repr. no. 435 p. 317 (exhibition view Naples 1992). |
