Il sole nero (dal mondo degli automi), 1993
GPE-0091
The Black Sun (From the World of Automata)
Silkscreen, offset print and collage
Fabriano Rosaspina, natural white 280 g
75.5 x 55 cm
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
30 in Roman numerals from I/XXX to XXX/XXX
Association Artists Against Torture Portfolio / Verein Kunstmappe Künstler gegen die Folter, St. Gallen (Switzerland)
Marco Noire Editore, Turin
The print is part of the portfolio titled Artists against Torture commissioned by the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), Geneva, to support its activity. The portfolio contains nineteen works by Georg Baselitz, Max Bill, Eduardo Chillida, Nicola de Maria, Rupprecht Geiger, Raimund Girke, Gotthard Graubner, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Jannis Kounellis, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Robert Mangold, Giulio Paolini, David Rabinowitch, Emil Schumacher, Antoni Tápies, Günther Uecker, and Not Vital.
Originally, the print was contained, along with eighteen other prints, in a white cardboard box, 85 x 65 x 3 cm, which includes four loose sheets: a title-page with the name of the publisher and the edition number, a note by Václav Havel (in Czech, German, English, and French), a text by the Association for the Prevention of Torture (in German and in English), and a sheet documenting the prints (captions and images, in German and in English).
• Note by Václav Havel (President of the Czech Republic) in support of the initiative concerning the prevention of torture.
• Text of the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT) concerning its activity and the initiative related to the portfolio. On the same sheet, a list of the members of the association “Verein Kunstmappe Künstler gegen die Folter”, created for the making of the portfolio.
The print commissioned for a graphic portfolio in support of the activity of an association engaged in the fight against torture reproduces the image of an eighteenth-century automaton, its head sectioned in order to reveal the mechanism inside. Applied at the top is a cut-out reproduction of the Earth, balanced precariously.
The distressing figure, whose missing face evokes a face that has been disfigured or slashed, alludes to the dehumanization of torture. The circular shape with a black background is also connoted in negative terms in the title itself: the “black sun” has several meanings, again linked to darkness and gloominess (black hole, solar eclipse, esoteric symbol of evil). The heaviness and gravity of the black sphere is offset by the small planetary sphere that soars above and that in Paolini's poetics represents an ideal dimension of harmonious perfection, to be understood as the metaphor for Art.
The print was developed in a thematic variant made during the same year as an original work on paper (GPC-0868).
| 1995 | Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão, Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques. Múltiplos e Obra Gráfica 1969-1995, 16 March - 28 May, not repr. in the exhibition brochure (catalogue Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini [Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992], update supplement 1992-95, cat. no. 91). |
| 1996 | Apolda, Kunsthaus Apolda Avantgarde, Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques, 27 September - 27 October (catalogue Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini [Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992], update supplement 1992-95, cat. no. 91). |
| 1997 | Göppingen, Kunsthalle, Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques. Das graphische Druckwerk 1967-1995, 9 March - 13 April (catalogue Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini [Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992], update supplement 1992-95, cat. no. 91). |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques, l’opera grafica (Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1995), update supplement 1992-95 to the volume Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini (Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992), cat. no. 91, col. repr. |
| • | Carte Noire. Noire Editions 1980/2015 (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2016), col. repr. n. pag. (artist’s proof). |
