Belvedere, 1993
GPO-0714
Collage on blue tempera card stock
Four framed parts 70 x 70 cm each, overall dimensions 220 x 220 cm
Private collection
The four elements placed close together in a tilted position feature at the centre an eighteenth-century youth associated with a multitude of planets in a free fall downwards, as if they were soap bubbles blown by him (the figure is taken from the Les bulles de savon [ca. 1734] by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin). The dispersion of the celestial bodies is amplified by the blank paper shapes featuring circular cuts that allow the rounds to appear in negative.
This work is part of a group of works with the same title, made between 1990 and 1996, whose common denominator is a figure located in either an elevated or a central position – in a "belvedere", as the title suggests – and correlated with one or more astral spheres, understood to be the symbolic model of incomparable perfection (cf. GPO-0665, GPO-0666, GPO-0667, GPO-0679, GPO-0698, GPO-0700, GPO-0714, GPO-0715, GPO-0776).
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Les bulles de savon, c. 1734, oil on canvas, 61 x 63.2 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
| 1993 | Zurich, Galerie Annemarie Verna, Giulio Paolini, 4 May - 3 July. |
| 2025-26 | Turin, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, NOTTI. Cinque secoli di stelle, sogni, pleniluni, 29 October 2025 - 1 March 2026, col. repr. pp. 126, 201, referred to in the text by C. De Pompeis p. 201 (with incorrect date “1994”). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 714 p. 730, col. repr. |
