Per un verso o per l’altro, 2007

The print with a fold in the centre reproduces two male figures wearing tails and mirroring each other, each of whom presents the image of a canvas, viewed from the recto and the verso, respectively. In the copies in Arabic numerals, the blank canvas features the inscription of a title that varies from one copy to another (corresponding to the title of a writing by the author published in the book for which the print was made), while the reversed canvas features the artist's signature.
The figure in ceremonial dress, in the role of the “dresser”,1 is a stand-in for the author who limits himself to announcing the vision of a painting, attested to by a title and certified by the author's signature. The placing together of the two opposite halves of a canvas recalls the title of the print, Per un verso o per l’altro (Either on One Side or the Other), while in a figurative sense the recto and the verso of a canvas suggest a 360 degree panorama around the countless possible faces of a painting, also evoked via the ever-changing title inscribed on the blank canvas.2

1 Cf. to this regard the description of the print L’ombelico dei limbi, 1991 (GPE-0082), at note 2.
2 The juxtaposition of the two canvases turned respectively to the recto and the verso is a motif that Paolini occasionally used in the early 1960s (cf. GPO-0023, GPO-0026) and more recurringly since 1978 (cf. GPO-0396). In the book of writings Per un verso o per l’altro, the motif, implicit to the title, is the common thread of the illustrations conceived by the artist for the occasion (cf. the original collages from GPC-2029 to GPC-2034).