Quadrante, 1975
GPO-0288
Quadrant
Photographic reproductions mounted on canvas, coloured pencils on primed canvas
30 x 120 cm (three parts 30 x 40 cm each)
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the third canvas, lower stretcher bar: “Giulio Paolini Quadrante 1975”
Private collection, Biella
Two colour photographs of a Venetian view painted by Canaletto are evoked on the middle canvas in a coloured pencil drawing that repeats in a reduced version that shows a reduced image of the two lateral elements. The spatial framing of the drawing does not just include the lateral elements in a room seen in perspective (meant to be the mirror of the space in which we find ourselves gazing at the painting), but at the same time it also duplicates the outline of the stretchers.
In other words, the work serves as a "quadrant" for itself, orienting the viewer's gaze towards the perception of the work as such.
The same theme was formulated in three other variants made during the same year (GPO-0287, GPO-0289, GPO-0840).
Giovanni Antonio Canal known as Il Canaletto, Il Molo verso ovest, con la Libreria e la colonna di San Teodoro, 1735, oil on canvas, 110.5 x 185.5 cm, Collezione Albertini, Rome.
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 288 p. 299, col. repr. |
