Giulio Paolini

The discovery of modern graphics during his studies and the fact that there were architecture magazines around the house – his elder brother Cesare (1937–1983) was a renowned architect, author of the famous Sacco chair – contributed to orienting him towards a line of research aimed at zeroing the image.

He did his first work in 1960, Disegno geometrico (Geometrical Drawing), his precocious artistic expression which consists of the squaring of 8 marks made by pencil and compass and 3 elongated ink lines stretching the entirety of a white tempera background on canvas.

For his first solo show – in 1964 at Gian Tommaso Liverani's La Salita gallery in Rome – he presented some rough wooden panels leant against or hanging on the wall, suggesting an exhibition in the process of being set up.

In the same year, through Carla Lonzi, he met Luciano Pistoi, owner of the Galleria Notizie in Turin, who introduced him to a new circle of friends and collectors and became his main dealer until the beginning of the 1970s.

Among Paolini's main references in those years were Jorge Luis Borges, to whom he paid homage on several occasions, and Giorgio de Chirico from whom he borrowed the constituent phrase of the work Et.quid.amabo.nisi.quod.ænigma est (1969).

In 1970 he took part in the Venice Biennale with Elegia (Elegy, 1969), the first work in which he used the plaster cast of a classic subject: the eye of Michelangelo's David with a fragment of mirror applied to the pupil.

The increasingly complex set-ups often followed a typology that was additive (seriality, juxtaposition) or centrifugal (dispersion or dissemination from a central nucleus) or centripetal (concentration and implosive superimposition).

In the 2000s, another theme especially dear to Paolini took on special importance, as much in his artwork as in his writings: the identity of the author, his condition as spectator, his lack of contact with a work that always precedes and supersedes him.

By means of photography, collage, plaster casts and drawing his intention is always to inquire, with great conceptual rigour, into the tautological and at the same time metaphysical nature of artistic practice.

Since the 1980s Paolini has mainly been represented by the galleries Christian Stein, Milan; Massimo Minini, Brescia; Alfonso Artiaco, Naples; Yvon Lambert, Paris and Marian Goodman, New York City.

The great anthological exhibitions took off towards the late 1970s (Istituto di Storia dell'Arte dell'Università di Parma, Parma, 1976; Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach, 1977; Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, 1977; Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes, Naples, 1978; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, touring to The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1980) and culminated in the second half of the 1980s (Le Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne, 1984, touring to Montreal, Vancouver and Charleroi; Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, 1986; Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli, 1986; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, 1988; Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Villa delle Rose, Bologna, 1990).

For the season 2002/2003 in the Vienna State Opera Giulio Paolini designed a large scale picture (176 sqm) as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived by museum in progress.

[5] Group exhibitions, innumerable since his participation in the 1961 Premio Lissone, include the shows connected with Arte Povera (1967–1971, 1984–85, 1997, 2001–02), the main international exhibitions of Italian art and many of the most significant shows dedicated to artistic development in the second half of the 20th century (for example: Vitalità del negativo, Rome 1970; Contemporanea, Rome 1973; Projekt '74, Cologne 1974; Europe in the Seventies, Chicago and touring through the United States 1977–78; Westkunst, Cologne 1981; '60–'80': Attitudes/concepts/images, Amsterdam 1982; An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, New York City 1984; The European Iceberg, Toronto 1985; Transformations in Sculpture, New York City 1985; Bilderstreit, Cologne 1989; 1965–1975: Reconsidering the Object of Art, Los Angeles 1995; The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960–82, Minneapolis and touring 2003–05).

Outstanding recent projects include the sets for Wagner's Die Walküre (2005) and Parsifal (2007) at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, directed by Federico Tiezzi.