Liber veritatis, 1979
GPO-0408
Pencil, red pencil and collage on reversed canvas and on primed canvas
Two parts 40 x 40 cm each, overall dimensions 40 x 82 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the second canvas, lower stretcher bar: “Giulio Paolini Liber Veritatis / 1979”
Private collection, Paris
The two canvases placed close together, one of them seen from the verso and the other from the recto, reproduce two proportionally reduced squares contained in the intersection of two visual angles drawn in red pencil. The trajectories of the two specular perspectives also contain the reproduction of a previous work by the artist, Edipo e la Sfinge (GPO-0329), in turn constituted by a game of specular opposites. The torn fragments distributed across both canvases come from a black and white reproduction of Œdipe et le Sphinx (1808) by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, used by Paolini in his homonymous work. Overall, the work puts in perspective both the painting by Ingres and the one by Paolini with the same title, as well as the vision of the two canvases.
The title – borrowed from that of the notebook of drawings in which, starting in 1636, Claude Lorrain recorded his paintings, reproducing them faithfully – reconnects the work to a thematic series of works made between 1978 and 1979 (GPO-0396, GPO-0406, GPO-0415).
Title from Claude Lorrain, Liber Veritatis, 1636-82, British Museum, London.
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 408 p. 416, col. repr. |
| • | B. Cinelli, “Il grande gioco dell’arte”, in Teatro di Mnemosine. Giulio Paolini d’après Watteau, exhibition catalogue, Lugano, Spazio -1 Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati (Bellinzona: Edizioni Casagrande, 2015), p. 65, repr. p. 67. |
