La Ronde, 1977
GPO-0350
Photo emulsion on canvas, colour photo print mounted on canvas
Seven parts 45 x 67 cm each, overall dimensions 45 x 480 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the seventh canvas, lower stretcher bar: “Giulio Paolini / La Ronde 1977”
Private collection
The sequence of seven elements placed at short intervals from each other features at the centre the colour photograph of a nineteenth-century painting – an interior with a woman who is seated as she observes the painter as he paints1 – accompanied on either side by three photographic canvases that offer a succession of details gradually closer up of the same image. Towards the left, three close-ups bring the viewer's gaze closer to the painting that the painter is making – the scene of a couple, with the woman seated – while towards the right is a reproduction of the image overall, replacing the painting on the easel, so that the last episode of the sequence presents a doubling of the original painting, which leads to the starting point.
The title cites the famous film by the German director Max Ophüls (La Ronde, 1950), which is based on a circular diegetic development.
1 The photograph reproduces the painting by Angelo Garino entitled Nota intima (1887), belonging to the collection of the family of the artist’s wife, Anna Paolini Piva.
• Angelo Garino, Nota intima, 1887, oil on canvas, 95 x 140 cm, Giulio Paolini Collection.
• Title from the film by Max Ophüls, La Ronde, 1950.
| 2017 | London, Luxembourg & Dayan, The Ends of Collage, 9 March - 13 May, not repr. |
| • | La traccia del racconto. 21 artisti italiani contemporanei, exhibition catalogue, Sanremo, Villa Comunale Ormond, 1977, repr. n. pag. (as La Ronde (a M. O.)). |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Werke und Schriften 1960-1980 (Lucerne: Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1981), repr. n. pag. (erroneously dated “1976”). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 350 pp. 360-361, col. repr. |
