Lezione di pittura, 1995

A male figure is seen sitting, immersed in thought, at the centre of an alternating sequence of fulls and voids, darks and lights. In the first of the three elements placed at short intervals, a white passepartout frames a grey sheet featuring a white rectangle applied to the middle. In the central element, a white passepartout allows the viewer to glimpse a small rectangle drawn on the wall. In the third element, a white passepartout frames a black sheet with an empty rectangle at the centre.
A stand-in for the author, the figure seems to contemplate "his" painting – which in the game of combinations of frames remains a trace against the light, a fleeting hypothesis – awaiting inspiration or revelation.
The "lesson" mentioned in the title is meant to allude, according to the artist, to the impossibility of theorizing anything on painting: "I never taught a lesson on painting, because I never taught an art that no one believes they can learn".1
This work is part of a group of homonymous works, made between 1994 and 1998 (both as "paintings" and as works on paper), whose common denominator is the seated figure, holding his head in his hands.

1 G. Paolini, Lezione di pittura (Lugo [Ravenna]: Exit Edizioni, 1995), p. 9.