Misura per misura, 2017
GPE-0137
Measure for Measure
Lithograph
Fedrigoni Tintoretto 300 g
Nine plates 26 x 24 cm each
Signed on the colophon of the portfolio: “Giulio Paolini”
Autograph numbering on the colophon of the portfolio
80 in Arabic numerals from 1/80 to 80/80
20 in Roman numerals from I/XX to XX/XX
Gitti e Bertelli Editori, Brescia
The portfolio is part of the activity of the publishing house Gitti e Bertelli, founded in 2015 in Brescia by Gregorio Gitti and Giorgio Bertelli, dedicated to the production of artist's books and graphic editions in close collaboration with the authors.
Double-sided three-flap white card stock folder, closed format 26.5 x 24.5 x 1.2 cm; cover with titles in black (author, title, publisher). Contains the nine plates and three bi-folios: the first with the title-page, the second with the plan for the plates (second side) and a note by the artist (third side), the third with the colophon.
Includes information regarding the number of plates, type of paper, edition size, and date of printing (4 November 2017). Signature and numbering bottom centre.
Note by the artist, Tre per tre..., referring to the subject of the portfolio.
The nine plates, individually framed and without a passepartout, must be arranged in three parallel rows of three units each, at short regular intervals (overall dimensions around 86 x 80 cm). The predetermined order of the sequence is binding.
The nine plates feature a series of frames, which each time become more complex, multiplying as if in a game of combinations. The initial frame that inscribes a single rectangle becomes the threshold for a room seen in perspective, then a series of rooms characterized by painting galleries. From the fifth plate onwards some viewers are added, viewed from behind and turned towards the vanishing point of the perspectival representation corresponding to a blank painting, a partial view of the sky or a sidereal image.
One painting, countless paintings, every possible painting and at the same time no paintings: a theory of framings that call into play the idea of the painting, its mental vision. The title, borrowed from a play by William Shakespeare but expressed by the author in the language of his own poetics, alludes to the series of images that are constantly being created, that, albeit ruled by measured geometric order, escape any concrete measurement.
The motif of the viewers turned towards a painting gallery is part of a research strand that began in 2014-15 and was developed in different variants in the following years, especially in the works on paper (among the prints cf. Studio per opere esposte, 2014, GPE-0132).
The original collage from which the print originates is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at numbers GPC-1569.
| 2022 | Monforte d’Alba (Cuneo), Castello di Perno, Giulio Paolini O.D.E., 29 October - 19 November, col. repr. pp. 150-151. |
| • | G. Paolini, Tre per tre..., note to the work inluded with the print edition. |
| • | G. Paolini in the interview with G. Galli, “Giulio Paolini: ‘Misura per misura per immagini in continuo divenire’”, in Il Giornale di Brescia(Brescia), 21 November 2018, p. 42. |
| • | G. Galli, ”Giulio Paolini: ‘Misura per misura per immagini in continuo divenire’”, in Il Giornale di Brescia (Brescia), 21 November 2018, p. 42, col. repr. (sixth, eighth and ninth plate). |
