Senza titolo, 1964
GPO-0061
Untitled
Plywood panel, paintbrushes smudged with paint
190 x 160 cm
Signed and dated on the verso on a white paper square: "Giulio Paolini 1964"
The Rose Collection and The Rachofsky Collection
Three paintbrushes filled with colour lie along the upper border of a plywood panel propped up against a wall. Without actually describing them, the paintbrushes "allude to 'works in progress'", according to the artist, in retrospect.1
The work is part of the research that distinguishes the artist's output in 1964, characterized by simple plywood panels that when placed on the ground or hung from the wall, in the artist's words, “‘replaced’ the presence of pictures on the walls and analyzed the purely conventional rapports of an exhibition” (1973).2 By expanding the gesture that merely suggests the possible vision of a painting, chosen by Paolini from the very outset as a paradigm of his own exploration, these works pave the way to the question that the painting raises at the moment of its exhibition and therefore its perception.
1 G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2003), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 61 p. 94.
2 G. Paolini, "Note di lavoro", in NAC 3 (Milan), March, 1973, p. 10.
| 2001-02 | London, Tate Modern, Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, 31 May - 19 August, touring to: Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, 13 October 2001 - 13 January 2002; Los Angeles, MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, 28 April - 22 September 2002; Washington D.C., The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 23 October 2002 - 12 January 2003, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 94 p. 357, col. repr. p. 275. |
| 2003 | Milan, Fondazione Prada, Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, 29 October - 18 December, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 399, col. repr. p. 121. |
| 2007 | Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, Fast Forward: Contemporary Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art, 11 February - 20 May, col. repr. p. 177. |
| 2013 | Dallas, The Warehouse, Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, 1 February - 31 October, no catalogue. |
| 2017 | Dallas, The Warehouse, Thinking Out Loud: Notes for An Evolving Collection, 10 February - 30 April, no catalogue. |
| 2022-23 | Dallas, The Warehouse, Open Storage: 25 Years Collecting, 26 August 2022 - 29 April 2023, no catalogue. |
| • | G. Paolini, “Note di lavoro”, in NAC 3 (Milan), March, 1973, p. 10; republished in Id., Idem (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1975), p. 42, new edition (Milan: Electa, 2023), p. 68. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), col. repr. p. 20. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 61 p. 94, col. repr. |
| • | J. Meinhardt, Giulio Paolini. Senza titolo, 1961. In collezione 3 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2015), p. 58, col. repr. p. 65. |
