La Musa (all’orizzonte), 2019
GPO-1085
The Muse (on the Horizon)
Plaster high-relief, pencil and red pencil on primed canvas
120 x 180 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the verso, on the upper fold of the canvas, centre: "La Musa (all'orizzonte) Giulio Paolini 2019"
Massimo De Carlo, Milan
An imaginary perspective, outlined in pencil on a primed canvas, acts as a background to the high-relief in plaster positioned in the area corresponding to the horizon line. The Neoclassical female figure is intent on drawing, as suggested by the trapezoidal rectangle, while other similar quadrilaterals, traced in black or red pencil, are scattered and appear to fall freely.
As the title tells us the female figure is a Muse, viewed by Paolini as a "source of inspiration and guide for the artist".1 Its gesture is a prelude to the search for or the becoming of the image, a central theme in Paolini's work, constantly renewed from one work to another as the quadrilaterals in free fall symbolically allude to.
The work is the third variant of the theme of the Muse on the horizon, which began in 2016 with a smaller version, produced on sheets of paper applied to canvas (GPO-1054), followed in 2019 by a large-scale version in which the Muse is intent on drawing three squares in the primary colours (GPO-1079).
1 G. Paolini in conversation with Bettina Della Casa, 11 June 2019.
Female nude with pen, Neoclassical period.
