Nodo scorsoio, 2022
GPE-0155
Loop in Rope
Lithograph
Fedrigoni Arcoprint
30 x 30 cm
Signed on the recto, bottom centre: “Giulio Paolini”
Handwritten numbering, not by the artist, on the recto, bottom left
35 in Arabic numerals from 1/35 to 35/35
20 in Roman numerals from I/XX to XX/XX
Edizioni l’Obliquo, Brescia
Grafica Sette Srl and Seven Media, Bagnolo Mella (Brescia)
The print was produced by Edizioni l’Obliquo, Brescia – directed by Giorgio Bertelli – on the occasion of the publication of the song A nœud coulant (1937) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, edited by Pasquale Di Palmo. It represents the second graphic portfolio in a trilogy produced by Bertelli together with Paolini in homage to a twentieth-century French writer (cf. Il pastore al suo padrone, GPE-0152 and Progetto, GPE-0157).
Double-sided white stock folder, with inside pocket, closed format 30.5 x 30.5 cm; cover with titles in red and black (title, authors, curator, publisher). Contains a title-page (on the recto the same as the cover, but with the title in black, on the verso acknowledgements and copyright), a sheet with the song by Céline (in French and in Italian), a sheet with a note by Pasquale di Palmo, the print and the colophon.
Includes information about the printer, edition size, printing technique, type of paper, place and date of printing (Brescia, 11 luglio 2022). Numbering bottom centre.
• Song by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, A nœud coulant (1937).
• Note by Pasquale di Palmo referring to the song by Céline and to the historical collaboration between Paolini and Bertelli, previously the publisher of two other texts by the French writer.
Against the background of a blue-orange sky, the loop of a noose contains the image of the Earth, while at the bottom a cut-out in the reproduction of the sky contains the photograph of a yellow rose.
Within the context of the portfolio, which includes the song by Louis-Ferdinand Céline mentioned in the print’s title, the dawn, the rose, and the noose are motifs that are present in the song's lyrics. In Paolinian iconography the sky, the globe, and the rose bear metaphorical value: the sky and the planet represent an ineffable dimension, which connotes the meaning of art, while the yellow rose (borrowed from a short story by Jorge Luis Borges) recalls the impossibility of holding that ungraspable dimension in perfect balance or fixing it in a definitive form.1
The original collage on which the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-2203.
1 The motif of the yellow rose comes from the emblematic tale by Jorge Luis Borges, Una rosa amarilla, in which the seventeenth-century Italian poet Giambattista Marino, on his deathbed, observed a yellow rose and understood that it was impossible to express its ungraspable essence (first published in the anthology of short stories El hacedor [The Maker] (1960), cf. J. L. Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley [London: Penguin Classics, 1998], p. 310). Paolini has recurringly cited Borges' text in his writings and artworks since 1970 (cf. the large-scale works GPO-0197, GPO-0941, GPO-1069, GPO-1072).
Title from the song written by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Au nœud coulant (1937).
| 2026 | Cesena, Galleria del Ridotto, La forma del libro / La forma del mondo, 21 March - 3 May, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 82, col. repr. no. 31 p. 81; artist’s proof. |
