La caduta di Icaro, 1981-82
GPO-0465
The Fall of Icarus
Collage on primed canvas and on reversed canvas, black pencil on reversed canvas
60 x 80 cm (two parts 60 x 40 cm each)
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the second canvas, upper centre: “Giulio Paolini / La caduta di Icaro 1981-82”
Private collection, Turin
The work offsets the image of a hand "touching" Venus with the drawing of a hand where the chance to hold onto a "vision" irremediably escapes. In the collage on the canvas to the left the reproduction of a hand is associated with the conventional symbol of the planet Venus and a half-folded reproduction. In the overturned canvas, the pencil instead "falls" from the hand traced partially on the stretcher and partially on the canvas, "falling" towards the Earth, represented by an image of the globe in a "free fall", integrated with a crumpled up colour reproduction of the chromatic spectrum. The work is a reformulation of the theme of the fall of Icarus, developed during the same period in a work with the same title pertaining to the genre of the installation (cf. GPO-0464).
Image of the Earth from David Bergamini, L’Universo (Milan: Mondadori, 1968), p. 51 (”Vedendo la Terra dallo spazio”).
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 465 p. 478, repr. |
