Giulio Paolini
Giulio Paolini, born 1940 in Genoa, Italy, lives and works in Turin, Italy. As one of the key figures of the Arte Povera movement, Paolini explores the role and methodology of the artist, as well as the conditions of art’s presentation and reception. His works often dismantle and reconfigure historical "art systems" – drawing from Renaissance perspective, the rhythms of Baroque architecture, or the formal elements of classical Greek art. Rather than rejecting these traditions, Paolini subverts them with subtle irony, while preserving the beauty and intellectual resonance of the original references. The resulting mixed-media and installation works are philosophical in nature, constantly reflecting on the act of creation and the relationship between the viewer, the artwork, and the artist. With a lyrical and poetic sensibility, Paolini invites us to reconsider what it means to see – and to be seen – in the space of art.
Giulio Paolini Editions
A prima vista (At First Sight)
2022/2024
From FACES
Digital pigment print with collage on Hahnemühle 300g rag paper, hand-torn, 60 x 50 cm. Edition of 45 + 8 AP, signed on label verso, numbered on the print itself.
Giulio Paolini’s edition A prima vista (At First Sight) captures a moment of timeless enchantment. At the center, two classical figures – Bacchus and Ariadne, whose "love at first sight" was captured in 16th-century sculpture and later in the famous oil painting by Titian – are shown in an embrace of marble stillness, their gazes frozen in an eternal first encounter. Above them, a photographic fragment of a clear blue sky introduces a burst of light and openness, contrasting with the solidity of the stone and suggesting a metaphysical space of longing or transcendence. True to Paolini’s conceptual practice, the work is less a narrative than a meditation on perception and presence. The title evokes not only romantic immediacy but also the act of seeing itself – of the viewer encountering the artwork and the figures encountering each other.
EUR 2,000
Chiaroscuro
1998
From Sequences
Two silkscreen and offset lithographs on Gohrsmühle rag paper, folded as passe-partouts, printed inside and outside. Each print 50 x 40 cm (19¾ x 15¾ in), each signed and numbered. Edition of 60.
Giulio Paolini on this diptych edition: "All my works revolve around a diaphragm implicit in the image – like an ideal mirror that reflects and reveals the appearance which constitute it. The two prints Chiaroscuro (light-dark) represent two different versions of the same image; a black spot on a white sheet (La Sainte-Vierge by Francis Picabia, 1920) and a white spot on a black sky (fireworks from a photograph by Paolo Mussat Sartor). The first image frames the second and vice versa."
EUR 800
Vis-à-vis (Hera)
1992
From Wall Works
Two halves of a plaster bust on white painted wooden pedestals, to be installed facing each other, spaced 35 cm apart, against a white painted wall. Installation size 169 x 90 x 15 cm (66½ x 35½ x 6 in). Limited to an edition of 10, with a signed and numbered certificate drawing.
Giulio Paolini’s wall work edition Vis-à-vis (Hera) stages a silent encounter between two mirrored halves of a classical plaster cast. The bisected head of Hera – the Greek goddess of marriage, women, and family – is mounted on twin white pedestals positioned directly opposite one another against the wall. In this confrontation, the two identical profiles seem to gaze eternally at one another, enacting a visual dialogue that is at once intimate and abstract. The work continues a line of inquiry Paolini initiated in 1975 with Mimesi, where the mirrored gaze of two classical heads first raised questions about the ontology of the artwork itself. Here, as then, Paolini explores the act of seeing and being seen, turning vision into both subject and medium. The duplication and symmetry suspend the sculpture in a state of timeless reflection, prompting viewers to consider not only the nature of artistic representation but also the moment of encounter – between image and viewer, between subject and object, and between identical selves. Vis-à-vis (Hera) becomes a meditation on identity, repetition, and the fundamental structures through which art manifests itself.
