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A Italo, 1975
GPO-0914
To Italo
Photo emulsion on canvas
20 x 40 cm
Dedicated, signed, and dated on the recto: “a Italo” (upper left), “Giulio Paolini / 1975” (lower left)
Private collection
The photographic canvas reproduces the perspectival drawing of the verso of a canvas, and a portrait of Italo Calvino, as if the writer were observing the painting dedicated to him, as indicated by the inscription “a Italo” (for Italo). The canvas actually hides the second figure in front of Calvino in the original image.
A painting within a painting, the work illustrates itself in a sort of mise en abîme: the painting that Calvino is intent on looking at is none other than the work itself, which Paolini dedicated to him.
Portrait of Italo Calvino, unknown source.
| • | Album Calvino, edited by L. Baranelli and E. Ferrero (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2003 [1995]), repr. p. 262. |
| • | A. Portesio, “’Quello che per il pittore è la squadratura della tela, per lo scrittore è l’incipit’. L’arte di Giulio Paolini raccontata da Italo Calvino. Con un’intervista a Giulio Paolini”, in Avanguardia 14, no. 40 (Rome), 2009, p. 76, repr. (as “A Italo”). |
| • | G. Paolini, “A come Accademia”, in Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. p. 19. |
| • | G. Paolini, “Quando è il presente?”, in Il Pensiero 62, no. 1 (Rome), 2023, repr. p. 224. |
| • | Favoloso Calvino. Il mondo come opera d’arte. Carpaccio, de Chirico, Gnoli, Melotti e gli altri, exhibition catalogue, Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, 2023-24, repr. p. 191. |
| • | A. Cortellessa, “La cornice e le stelle”, in G. Paolini, Idem (Milan: Electa, 2023), p. 143, repr. |
Entry by Maddalena Disch, 07/05/2026
