Vedo (la decifrazione del mio campo visivo), 1969
GPO-0189
I See (The Deciphering of My Visual Field)
Pencil on primed canvas
225 x 375 cm (four parts 112.5 x 187.5 cm each)
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the first canvas, upper stretcher bar, left: “Giulio Paolini / Vedo 1969”
Pinault Collection
The multitude of points made in pencil on four primed canvases placed close enough together so that they touch retraces the area corresponding to the visual field of both the author and the viewer. “Vedo is the abstract and conceptual scheme of vision, it is the translation into numbers of the phenomenon of seeing”,1 remarks the artist.
The work is a reproduction made during the same year of the first version originally realized on sheets of paper and later directly on the wall (GPO-0188). The theme of Vedo was subsequently developed in four other variants (GPO-0276, GPO-0512, GPO-1051, GPO-1068).
1 G. Paolini interviewed by A. Bonito Oliva, in Paolini: opere 1961/73, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Studio Marconi, 1973, n. pag.; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 152.
| 1987 | Paris, Galerie Durand-Dessert, Arte Povera 1965-1971, 10 January - 7 March. |
| 1987 | Nîmes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Italie hors d’Italie, 10 July - 30 September, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 53 p. 214 (with incorrect dimensions “225 x 320 cm”), repr. p. 98 (detail). |
| 1995 | Paris, Galerie Durand-Dessert, Arte Povera 1965-1972, 11 March - 13 May. |
| 1998 | Paris, Galerie Durand-Dessert, Le corps en perspective, 30 May - 25 July. |
| 2004 | Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, L’Art au futur antérieur. Liliane et Michel Durand-Dessert, l’engagement d’une galerie 1975-2004, Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, 10 July - 4 October, col. repr. n. pag. (with incorrect dimensions). |
| 2008-10 | Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Italics. Arte italiana fra tradizione e rivoluzione 1968-2008, 27 September 2008 - 22 March 2009, touring to: Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, 14 November 2009 - 14 February 2010, col. repr. pp. 143 (erroneously reproduced twice on the same page), 303. |
| 2013-15 | Venice, Punta della Dogana, François Pinault Foundation, Prima materia, 30 May 2013 - 15 February 2015, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 246, col. repr. pp. 220-221, 233 (exhibition views). |
| 2024-25 | Paris, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Arte Povera, 9 October 2024 - 20 January 2025, repr. pp. 154-155 (detail), catalogue entry by N.X. Ferrand p. 249. |
| • | G. Paolini in the interview with A. Bonito Oliva, "Dentro il linguaggio", in Paolini: opere 1961/73, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Studio Marconi, 1973, n. pag.; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 152. |
| • | P. Tedeschi, "In una casa ‘povera’. Una Collezione di Arte Povera", in Vogue Italia 391 (Milan), September II, 1982, col. repr. p. 845 (installation view at the home of the collector Ermini, Ponti sul Mincio). |
| • | Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2003), repr. p. 293 (detail). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 189 p. 203, repr. |
| • | N.X. Ferrand, “Un retour à la ‘Nature’? Être vivant”, in Beaux Arts Hors-série. Arte Povera à la Bourse de Commerce (Paris) (Paris), October, 2024, p. 50, not repr. |
