La dea Iride, 1969
GPO-0195
Goddess Iris
Coloured pencils on primed canvas and on wall
Canvas 95 x 95 cm, overall dimensions 155 x 125 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the canvas, upper stretcher bar, left: “Giulio Paolini / La dea Iride / 1969”
Collection of the artist
In her role as messenger between Heaven and Earth, the goddess Iris, drawn on the wall in the seven colours of the rainbow, offers the gaze the blind screen of a primed canvas.
The explicit presence of a mythological figure, used here for the first time,1 institutes an unfillable gap with respect to the immediate perception and the possibility itself of seeing a fulfilled image.
“Paradoxically, approaching the myth means learning to keep ones distance, to not require contact, to listen”,2 said the artist in 1995 as concerns the figures in his works drawn from mythology, intimately linked to the dimension of the classical and to the memory of a model of beauty evoked in the awareness of their unapproachability.
1 Some of the previous works include a reference to the mythological context in the title alone (cf. Delfo, GPO-0085), or else purely nominal to the mythological figures of Echo, Narcissus, and Icarus (GPO-0095, GPO-0121, GPO-0150).
2 G. Paolini interviewed by M. Disch, in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 297.
Head of the figure from the cover of Emporium 54, no. 322 (Bergamo), 1921.
| 1970 | Rome, QUI arte contemporanea, Giulio Paolini. Vedo, 20 January - 7 February, cited in the checklist of exhibited works, not repr., referred to in the text by M. Volpi Orlandini. |
| 1970 | Turin, Galleria Notizie, Giulio Paolini. Vedo, 18 February - 20 March, cited in the checklist of exhibited works, not repr., referred to in the text by M. Volpi Orlandini. |
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini. Vedo, exhibition catalogue, Turin, Galleria Notizie, 1970; republished in Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2003), p. 301. |
| • | G. Paolini in the interview with M. Disch (1995), in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 297. |
| • | M. Volpi Orlandini, La retina e l’inconscio. Note di arte contemporanea (Palermo: Palumbo Editore, 1973), pp. 148-149, 150, not repr. (taken from Giulio Paolini. Vedo, exhibition catalogue, Turin, Galleria Notizie, 1970); republished in Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2003), p. 308. |
| • | M. Volpi Orlandini, "L’art pauvre", in Opus International 16 (Paris), March, 1970, p. 42, not repr. |
| • | G. Brizio, "Giulio Paolini ovvero ‘quam raptim ad sublimia’", in Graphicus 52, no. 10 (Turin), October, 1971, p. 37, repr. p. 38 (detail). |
| • | Albers, Arman, Arp, Balla, Bill, Burri, Christo, Fabro, Fontana, Gris, Herbin, Kandinsky, Klein, Léger, Manzoni, Melotti, Mirò, Nigro, Paolini, Picabia, Rotella, Scarpitta, Soto, Tanguy, Tapies, Tinguely, Twombly, Vasarely. Scelta di opere a cura della Galleria Notizie di Torino, dello Studio Bellini di Milano e dello Studio "C" di Brescia (Turin: n.d.), repr. no. 111. |
| • | T. Trini, "Giulio Paolini", in Art press 4 (Paris), May-June, 1973, p. 16, not repr. |
| • | T. Trini, “Giulio Paolini, un decennio. Parte prima: Il vero e il visibile”, in Data 3, no. 7-8, (Milan), Summer, 1973, p. 61, not repr.; republished in Tommaso Trini. Mezzo secolo di arte intera. Scritti 1964-2014, edited by L. Cerizza (Milan: Johan & Levi Editore, 2016), p. 107, not repr.). |
| • | G. Paolini, Idem (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1975), repr. p. 38; new edition (Milan: Electa, 2023), repr. p. 64. |
| • | Giulio Paolini (Parma: Università di Parma, Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, 1976), repr. no. 117. |
| • | Identité Italienne. L’art en Italie depuis 1959, edited by G. Celant (Paris-Florence: Centre Georges Pompidou and Centro Di, 1981), p. 320, repr. p. 321. |
| • | G.B. Salerno, “Nero-Kounellis, Bianco-Paolini” in Flash Art 19, no. 132 (Milan, Italian edition), April-May, 1986, not repr. |
| • | 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. 228. |
| • | Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, op. cit. (Milan: 2003), col. repr. p. 301. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 195 p. 208, col. repr. |
| • | B. Satre, "Giulio Paolini, entre fragment et fragmentation", in Influxus, online journal, 28 May 2014. |
| • | M.G. Messina, "Strade parallele di Marisa Volpi e di Giulio Paolini, 1968-1973", in Ricerche di storia dell’arte 124 (Rome), 2018, p. 103, repr. |
| • | P. Repetto, “Oltre il visibile”, in Giulio Paolini. O.D.E., exhibition catalogue, Monforte d’Alba (Cuneo), Castello di Perno (Alba: Fondazione Mancini Carini, 2022), p. 39, col. repr. p. 48 no. 12. |
