Pendant, 1979
GPO-0409
Pencil on primed canvas, on reversed canvas and on wall, bay leaves
Four parts 30 x 30 cm each, overall dimensions site-specific
Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Turin
Gift of the artist, 25 October 2012, archive no. GPO-0409
The work installed on two opposite walls of a room involves for each of them a perspectival drawing, which repeats the spatial framing of the wall and contains the profile of a female figure with a laurel leaf diadem. The figure is holding a pair of canvases, one viewed from the recto, the other from the verso, whose position is inverted in the passage from one wall to another (the drawing of the hands continues onto the canvas). The canvas viewed from the recto features the same spatial pattern as what is drawn on the wall, which at the same time alludes to the framing of the stretcher of the overturned canvas. The laurel leaves scattered on the floor before each wall echo the allegorical ones encircling the figure's head.
The same theme was reformulated in 1980 in two further variants: a smaller one (GPO-0841), and another one that is distinguished by the use of larger canvases and by the presence of a collage of laurel leaves (GPO-0430).
Figure from Davide Bertolotti, L’Italia descritta e dipinta con le sue isole di Sicilia, Sardinia, Elba, Malta, Eolie, di Calipso, ecc. 2 (Turin: Giuseppe Pomba e C., 1837-38), plate 14 (“Pitture antiche. Pompei. Peintures Antiques”).
| 1979 | Munich, Völkerkundemuseum, Eine Ausstellung mit Werken von zwölf Künstlern, 11 April - 10 May, no catalogue. |
| 1980 | Zurich, Galerie Annemarie Verna, Giulio Paolini. Pendant, from 5 February. |
| • | Fabro, Kounellis, Merz, Paolini. Materialien zu einer Ausstellung, exhibition catalogue, Bern, Kunsthalle Bern, 1980, repr. n. pag. (Paolini during the installation of Pendant in Munich in 1979). |
| • | La Biennale di Venezia. Settore Arti Visive. Catalogo generale 1980, exhibition catalogue, Venice, Giardini di Castello (Milan: Electa 1980), repr. p. 35 (exhibition view Zurich 1980). |
| • | H. Szeemann, “Dossier G.P.”, in Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 1980, p. 3, not repr.; republished in Id., Museum der Obsessionen (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1981), p. 42, not repr.; Der Traum des Orpheus. Mythologie in der italienischen Gegenwartskunst 1967 bis 1984, exhibition catalogue, Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1984, p. 77, not repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Werke und Schriften 1960-1980 (Lucerne: Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1981), repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Zurich 1980). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 409 pp. 416-417, repr. (exhibition view Zurich 1980). |
