Aula di pittura (La Sainte Vierge), 2006

A plexiglas sheet suspended at the viewer’s eye level, just slightly away from the wall, bears the impression of the image of Francis Picabia’s Sainte Vierge II (1921). On the rear wall, the perspective drawing offers a view of a painting classroom, with several tables in the foreground and a painting on display on the easel located in the vanishing point of the drawing.1 The painting on the easel in turn contains a square outlined in red pencil, which simulates a “copy from life” of the hanging plexiglas sheet. Applied to the middle of the table is the reproduction of a class register featuring in autograph calligraphy the opening date of the specific exhibition, followed by the title of the work and the author’s signature.
Against the virtual background of the drawn classroom, the sheet with the Picabian ink blotch represents the only material trace, almost an apparition “in person” of Painting, which the red square on the wall either transcribes or inscribes in the dimension of a painting. In other words, in the here-and-now of the exhibition event (evoked by the date on the register), the summoning to the “painting classroom” questions the idea of painting itself.

1 The table in the middle is made up of four canvases arranged close together (the visible edges show the nails); the painting on the easel, also consisting of four parts, is specular to the quartet of canvases making up the table.