Senza titolo, 1962

The twelve units cut out from the photographs of some drawings by Achille Perilli, which were reproduced in a magazine from that period, are arranged at regular intervals on a masonite support. Their order is arbitrary, so that the “beginning and the end” of the image does not coincide with the “beginning and the end” of the original.
In the artist's words: “The same way I chose coloured paper and graph paper, I also chose the reproductions of works of art. The reproduction was assumed as the potential of elements to be rearranged, not because I wanted to intervene on that work in particular, but as a sample to be placed on a modular surface".1
The current appearance of the work dates to an additional intervention, on an unknown date, when Paolini added a white paper square to the centre of each photographic unit.

1 G. Paolini in G. Celant, Giulio Paolini (New York: Sonnabend Press, 1972) p. 29 (revised translation, republished in Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, edited by G. Celant [Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2003], p. 106), reprint (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2019), p. 29.