Per “Cento luoghi di-versi. Un viaggio in Italia”, 2020
GPE-0143
For “One Hundred Different Places in Verse. A Journey Across Italy”
Silkscreen and embossing
Plate 46.2 x 31.3 cm folded, 46.2 x 62.6 cm open
Signed on the recto, bottom right: “Giulio Paolini”
Autograph numbering on the recto, bottom left
150 in Arabic numerals from 1/150 to 150/150
20 in Roman numerals from I/XX to XX/XX
Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome
The print was commissioned by the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome, on the occasion of the publication of the volume by Franco Marcoaldi and Tomaso Montanari titled Cento luoghi di-versi. Un viaggio in Italia.
Franco Marcoaldi and Tomaso Montanari, Cento luoghi di-versi. Un viaggio in Italia (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2020). Italy in one hundred poetic texts accompanied by one hundred colour images from different eras and in different styles.
Edition without print: 28 x 24 cm, 248 pages, bound; print run unknown. Limited edition with cover design by the artist and print enclosed: 48 x 34 cm, 236 pages, bound, with calf leather spine; limited edition of 150 copies in Arabic numerals and 20 copies in Roman numerals.
The colophon of the book includes information regarding the print run, cover design by the artist, print edition, printer, type of paper, and binding. Numbering bottom centre.
The plate, with a fold in the middle, reproduces the painting The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772-77) by Johann Zoffany, divided into four parts placed close together incongruously (the first and the last are cropped, suggesting a potentially unlimited continuity). Inside the individual parts the integrity of the image is interrupted by details of the painting itself inserted in an incoherent way or by the discontinuous montage of the details, which are at times upside down. The images of the painting are overlapped by several reproductions of gilt frames and a drawing in black, in dry relief, of linear rectangles that suggest other paintings, still without a face.
The frames and the framings that echo the multitude of paintings gathered in the Tribune of the Uffizi generate a circular itinerary, in which past, present, and future intersect and correspond to one another. The journey in art history leads to the idea itself of a painting: a framing that invites the gaze to imagine all the paintings possible, to become lost in the definition of a painting.
The iconographic theme recalls the print Contrappunto (GPE-0094), made in 1994, as well as an original variant on paper developed in 1996 (GPC-1756). It is also corroborated in the work on paper Per “Cento luoghi diversi” (GPC-2081), conceived as the first idea for the cover of the book which includes this same print.
The print is based on the collage documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-2106.
Johann Zoffany, The Tribuna of the Uffizi, 1776, oil on canvas, 123.5 x 155 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor.
