AB 3, 1966
GPO-0097
Primed canvas
35 x 50 x 25 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso, centre: “Giulio Paolini / AB 3 / 1966”
Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Turin
Gift of the artist, 25 October 2012, archive no. GPO-0097
A small equilateral triangular canvas is wedged upside down in the upper corner of a room. The title combines two elementary logical progressions (ABC and 123) in an illogical algebraic formula.
The work is part of the research that distinguished the artist's output in 1966. Starting from the same premise – canvases juxtaposed so that they mark the corner of a room, seen as the elementary point of origin of a space – many different optical configurations were developed, calling into play the gap between the logical assumption – the elementary and rational given – and the illogical and mutating complexity of the perception.
| 1966 | Milan, Galleria dell’Ariete, Giulio Paolini, from 15 April, cat. no. 9, not repr. |
| 2018-19 | Milan, Fondazione Carriero, Giulio Paolini. Del bello ideale, 26 October 2018 - 10 February 2019, col. repr. vol. 1 pp. 138-139 (exhibition view), 157. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 97 p. 126, repr. |
| • | R. Cuomo, Giulio Paolini. Lo spazio, 1967. In collezione 4 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2016), p. 52, not repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. p. 285 (exhibition view Milan 2018). |
| • | F. Guzzetti, “‘Non si trattava di elaborare degli spazi astratti’: Giulio Paolini all’Ariete, 1966”, in Spazi astratti. Interferenze fra architettura e arti a Milano 1945-1970, edited by A.V. Navone, L. Tedeschi, and S. Setti (Milan: Electa, 2024), pp. 125, 130-131, repr. p. 127 (exhibition view Milan 1966). |
