Equivalenza, 1975
GPO-0282
Equivalence
Pencil and nails on primed canvas
100 x 150 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso, upper stretcher bar, left: “Giulio Paolini / Equivalenza 1975”
Private collection
The primed canvas features the drawing of three paintings seen in perspective (the likeness is reinforced by the actual nails placed along the vertical sides). The rectangle outlined at the centre is included along the vanishing lines of the perspectival drawing, which at the same time determine the rectangle's diagonals, squaring its surface.
“My use of perspective is an artifice, an attempt to create a distance with the presence of the painting as such. This artifice, made evident, gives me a chance to move the scene of the work away from the physical limit of vision, and to acknowledge the existence of a curtain that appears before our eyes”1, Paolini remarks.
The same theme was developed in three other variants made during the same year (GPO-0279, GPO-0280, GPO-0281).
1 G. Paolini interviewed by F. Pasini, in L’Illustrazione italiana 5, no. 24 (Milan), November, 1985, p. 21 (formulation revisited by the artist); republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 207-208.
| 2018 | Milan, Galleria Fumagalli, Giulio Paolini. Teoria delle apparenze. Opere 1969-2015, 16 January - 14 April, col. repr. pp. 46-47, 49, 66-67 (exhibition views), referred to in the text by A. Madesani p. 14, A. Maggi p. 22. |
| • | G. Paolini in the interview with F. Pasini, in L’Illustrazione italiana 5, no. 24 (Milan), November, 1985, p. 21; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 207-208. |
| • | G. Paolini in conversation with A. Madesani, in Giulio Paolini. Teoria delle apparenze. Opere 1969-2015, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Galleria Fumagalli, 2018, p. 14. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 282 p. 293, col. repr. |
| • | Paolini. I Grandi illustrati del Corriere della Sera. Arte contemporanea – I protagonisti 8, edited by F. Gualdoni (Milan: RCS MediaGroup S.p.a., 2022), pp. 50, 54, col. repr. p. 51. |
