Lezione di pittura, 1995

The lithograph printed on the inside of the dust jacket of the volume of the artist's writings Lezione di pittura features the drawing of a room, with two doors at the back (the one on the left is cut out) and a floor featuring a perspectival grid.1 On the wall at the back, at the centre of the plate, a linear square recalls a painting. In the passageway to the right, a valet is associated with the beginning of a series of photographic squares reproducing pieces of plaster.2 Appearing in the foreground, to the left, is a partial view of the photographic reproduction of the verso of a large-scale painting, from Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, 1656), while slightly beyond it is a man sitting holding his head in his hands (from the painting Beethoven, 1900, by Lionello Balestrieri). The perspectival drawing of the floor is brought to life by different elements, each of them inscribed in a geometric shape: a red flame at the centre of a circle, a blue tondo inside a lozenge, a cosmic sphere inside a circle, the photographic fragment of a floor mosaic inscribed in a rectangle squared with red diagonals, and, to the right, a detail from the volumetric structure based on the multiplication of Disegno geometrico3.
The figure absorbed in thought – a stand-in for the author – seems to meditate on "his" painting, as he awaits an inspiration or a revelation. An unknown painting is suggested by the mysterious Velazquesian verso, which is reflected in the unknown of the empty cut-out in the area corresponding to the left door of the room. The other images suggest traces of works that have already been consumed or are yet to come, the props of a performance without a script; allegorically, the flame, the blue tondo, the cosmic sphere, and the detail of the floor, resembling a stone, seem to allude to the four Elements (fire, water, air, earth), as the symbols of the ineffable Everything.
The print is part of a series of theme-based variants, which began in 1994 and continued until 1998 both large-scale (cf. GPO-0752, GPO-0753 and in particular GPO-0754), and on paper (cf. in particular GPC-0882, GPC-0903, GPC-0904, GPC-0913, GPC-0926, GPC-1761).
The original collage on which the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-0881.

1 The drawing introduced in 1991, in the series of works titled Contemplator enim, reproduces the entrance hallway in Giulio Paolini's Turin home (cf. the prints GPE-0080, GPE-0088).
2 The image is taken from the fifth plate of the portfolio Contemplator enim, 1991 (GPE-0080), reproducing a pair of valets holding or offering seven photographic squares aligned in horizontal.
3 The detail of the floor is from the photograph of the floor in the same entrance hall in Paolini's home, while the rectangle with the red diagonals recalls Disegno geometrico, 1960; for the volumetric structure see the seventh plate in the portfolio Contemplator enim (GPE-0080).