Giulio Paolini
Encyclopedia
Giulio Paolini is an Italian
artist. Often linked to the Arte Povera
movement, he is best known for an artistic practice that is inscribed in a more strictly conceptual
sphere.
.
After a childhood spent in Bergamo
, he moved with his family to Turin
where he still lives today. He attended the Giambattista Bodoni State Industrial Technical School of Graphics and Photography, graduating in the Graphics department in 1959. He had been interested in art
from an early age, visiting museums and galleries and reading art periodicals. Towards the end of the 1950s
he approached painting
, trying some pictures of an abstract nature, close to monochrome
. 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 an architect – 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), which consists of the squaring in ink of a canvas painted with white tempera. This preliminary gesture of any representation whatever would remain the point of “eternal recurrence” in the universe of Paolini’s thought: topical moment and original instant that revealed the artist to himself, representing the conceptual foundation of all his future work.
In the early 1960s
Paolini developed his research by focusing on the very components of the picture: on the painter’s tools and on the space of representation. 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. The show was seen by Carla Lonzi and Marisa Volpi who would shortly afterwards write the first critical texts on the young artist. In 1965 Paolini began to use photography, which allowed him to extend his inquiry to the relationship between artist and work (Delfo, 1965; 1421965, 1965). 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
.
Between 1967 and 1972 the critic Germano Celant
invited him to take part in Arte Povera
exhibitions which resulted in his name being associated with that movement. In actual fact Paolini’s position was clearly distinct from the vitalistic climate and “existential phenomenology” that distinguished the propositions of Celant’s artists. He repeatedly declared an intimate belonging to the history of art, identifying programmatically with the lineage of all the artists who had preceded him. Some of his best known works can be traced back to this purpose, extraneous to the militant scene of the late 1960s: Giovane che guarda Lorenzo Lotto (Young Man Looking at Lorenzo Lotto, 1967), the “self-portraits” from Poussin and Rousseau (1968) and the pictures in which he reproduces details of old masters’ paintings (L’ultimo quadro di Diego Velázquez, 1968; Lo studio, 1968). 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).
His first official acknowledgements came with the 1970s
: from shows abroad, which placed him on the international avant-garde gallery circuit, to his first museum exhibitions. 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. One of the outstanding themes in this decade was a backward glance at his own work: from literal citation of celebrated paintings he arrived at self-citation, proposing a historicizing in perspective of his oeuvre. Works such as La visione è simmetrica? (Is Vision Symmetrical?, 1972) or Teoria delle apparenze (Theory of Appearances, 1972) allude to the idea of the picture as potential container of all past and future works. Another theme investigated with particular interest in this period was that of the double and the copy, which found expression above all in the group of works entitled Mimesi (Mimesis, 1975–76) consisting of two plaster casts of the same classical statue set face to face, calling into question the concept of reproduction
and representation itself.
The period most dense in exhibitions and retrospectives, with the publication of important monographs, was the 1980s
. In the first half of the decade an explicitly theatrical dimension began to establish itself with works marked by fragmentation and dispersion (La caduta di Icaro, 1982; Melanconia ermetica, 1983) or distinguished by theatrical figures such as eighteenth century valets de chambre (Trionfo della rappresentazione, 1984). Paolini’s poetics was considerably enriched by literary attributions and mythological
references, as well as by the introduction of cosmic images. In the late 1980s the artist's reflections turned mainly on the very act of exhibiting. Starting with his solo show at the Musée des Beaux-Arts
in Nantes (1987) the concept of the exhibition – its premises and its promises – became progressively configured as the actual subject of the works themselves.
In the course of the 1990s
, further inquiry into the idea of exhibiting spread into other, new modalities. 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). The place of the exhibition became the stage par excellence of the “theatre of the opus”, meaning of the work in its doing and undoing: the place that defined the very eventuality of its happening (Esposizione universale, 1992; Teatro dell’opera, 1993; Essere o non essere, 1995). Completion of the work was moreover constantly deferred, leaving the spectator in perennial expectation: just what the artist always feels from the start at his worktable, waiting for the work to manifest itself.
In the noughties 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.
Paolini’s poetics and artistic practice as a whole may be characterised as a self-reflective meditation on the dimension of art, on its timeless “classicality” and its perspective without vanishing point. By means of photography
, collage
, plaster cast
s 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.
, 1964) Paolini has exhibited in art galleries and museums worldwide. Collaboration with avant-garde Italian galleries of the 1960s and 1970s (La Salita, Rome
; Galleria Notizie, Turin
; Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan
; Galleria del Leone, Venice
; La Tartaruga, Rome
; L'Attico, Rome; Studio Marconi, Milan
; Modern Art Agency, Naples
) was swiftly integrated with regular presence in important foreign galleries (from 1971 Paul Maenz, Cologne
; from 1972 Sonnabend
, New York
; from 1973 Annemarie Verna, Zurich
; from 1976 Yvon Lambert
, Paris
; from 1977 Lisson Gallery
, London
). 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
.
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
; 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). Outstanding recent solo shows were held in Graz
(Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum, 1998), Turin
(Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 1999), Verona
(Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti, 2001), Milan
(Fondazione Prada, 2003), Winterthur
(Kunstmuseum Winterthur
, 2005) and Münster
(Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 2005).
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
1984; The European Iceberg, Toronto
1985; Transformations in Sculpture, New York
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). Paolini has appeared several times at documenta
Kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, 1992) and the Venice Biennale
(1970, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1993, 1995, 1997).
, from the sets and costumes for Vittorio Alfieri
’s Bruto II, directed by Gualtiero Rizzi (1969), to his collaboration with Carlo Quartucci and the Zattera di Babele in the 1980s
. 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.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
artist. Often linked to the Arte Povera
Arte Povera
Arte Povera is a modern art movement. The term was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether...
movement, he is best known for an artistic practice that is inscribed in a more strictly conceptual
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
sphere.
Biography
Paolini was born in GenoaGenoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
.
After a childhood spent in Bergamo
Bergamo
Bergamo is a town and comune in Lombardy, Italy, about 40 km northeast of Milan. The comune is home to over 120,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent the metropolitan area of Milan...
, he moved with his family to Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
where he still lives today. He attended the Giambattista Bodoni State Industrial Technical School of Graphics and Photography, graduating in the Graphics department in 1959. He had been interested in art
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
from an early age, visiting museums and galleries and reading art periodicals. Towards the end of the 1950s
1950s
The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century...
he approached painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, trying some pictures of an abstract nature, close to monochrome
Monochrome
Monochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
. The discovery of modern graphics
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
during his studies and the fact that there were architecture magazines around the house – his elder brother Cesare (1937–1983) was an architect – 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), which consists of the squaring in ink of a canvas painted with white tempera. This preliminary gesture of any representation whatever would remain the point of “eternal recurrence” in the universe of Paolini’s thought: topical moment and original instant that revealed the artist to himself, representing the conceptual foundation of all his future work.
In the early 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
Paolini developed his research by focusing on the very components of the picture: on the painter’s tools and on the space of representation. For his first solo show – in 1964 at Gian Tommaso Liverani’s La Salita gallery in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
– he presented some rough wooden panels leant against or hanging on the wall, suggesting an exhibition in the process of being set up. The show was seen by Carla Lonzi and Marisa Volpi who would shortly afterwards write the first critical texts on the young artist. In 1965 Paolini began to use photography, which allowed him to extend his inquiry to the relationship between artist and work (Delfo, 1965; 1421965, 1965). In the same year, through Carla Lonzi, he met Luciano Pistoi
Luciano Pistoi
Luciano Pistoi , art critic, dealer, journalist and publisher, promoter and organizer of cultural events. One of the most prominent figures in the postwar Italian art world....
, 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
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
.
Between 1967 and 1972 the critic Germano Celant
Germano Celant
Germano Celant is an Italian art historian, critic and curator, mostly renewed for being one of the founding members of the "Arte Povera" movement in 1967....
invited him to take part in Arte Povera
Arte Povera
Arte Povera is a modern art movement. The term was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether...
exhibitions which resulted in his name being associated with that movement. In actual fact Paolini’s position was clearly distinct from the vitalistic climate and “existential phenomenology” that distinguished the propositions of Celant’s artists. He repeatedly declared an intimate belonging to the history of art, identifying programmatically with the lineage of all the artists who had preceded him. Some of his best known works can be traced back to this purpose, extraneous to the militant scene of the late 1960s: Giovane che guarda Lorenzo Lotto (Young Man Looking at Lorenzo Lotto, 1967), the “self-portraits” from Poussin and Rousseau (1968) and the pictures in which he reproduces details of old masters’ paintings (L’ultimo quadro di Diego Velázquez, 1968; Lo studio, 1968). Among Paolini’s main references in those years were Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, to whom he paid homage on several occasions, and Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...
from whom he borrowed the constituent phrase of the work Et.quid.amabo.nisi.quod.ænigma est (1969).
His first official acknowledgements came with the 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
: from shows abroad, which placed him on the international avant-garde gallery circuit, to his first museum exhibitions. In 1970 he took part in the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
with Elegia (Elegy, 1969), the first work in which he used the plaster cast
Plaster cast
A plaster cast is a copy made in plaster of another 3-dimensional form. The original from which the cast is taken may be a sculpture, building, a face, a fossil or other remains such as fresh or fossilised footprints – particularly in palaeontology .Sometimes a...
of a classic
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
subject: the eye of Michelangelo’s David
David (Michelangelo)
David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence...
with a fragment of mirror applied to the pupil. One of the outstanding themes in this decade was a backward glance at his own work: from literal citation of celebrated paintings he arrived at self-citation, proposing a historicizing in perspective of his oeuvre. Works such as La visione è simmetrica? (Is Vision Symmetrical?, 1972) or Teoria delle apparenze (Theory of Appearances, 1972) allude to the idea of the picture as potential container of all past and future works. Another theme investigated with particular interest in this period was that of the double and the copy, which found expression above all in the group of works entitled Mimesi (Mimesis, 1975–76) consisting of two plaster casts of the same classical statue set face to face, calling into question the concept of reproduction
Mimesis
Mimesis , from μιμεῖσθαι , "to imitate," from μῖμος , "imitator, actor") is a critical and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the...
and representation itself.
The period most dense in exhibitions and retrospectives, with the publication of important monographs, was the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
. In the first half of the decade an explicitly theatrical dimension began to establish itself with works marked by fragmentation and dispersion (La caduta di Icaro, 1982; Melanconia ermetica, 1983) or distinguished by theatrical figures such as eighteenth century valets de chambre (Trionfo della rappresentazione, 1984). Paolini’s poetics was considerably enriched by literary attributions and mythological
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
references, as well as by the introduction of cosmic images. In the late 1980s the artist's reflections turned mainly on the very act of exhibiting. Starting with his solo show at the Musée des Beaux-Arts
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes
The Fine arts Museum of Nantes is an art museum in Nantes, France.The museum was created in 1801 with the purchase of the Cacault collection and was located in is actual Palais des Beaux-Arts since 1900....
in Nantes (1987) the concept of the exhibition – its premises and its promises – became progressively configured as the actual subject of the works themselves.
In the course of the 1990s
1990s
File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...
, further inquiry into the idea of exhibiting spread into other, new modalities. 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). The place of the exhibition became the stage par excellence of the “theatre of the opus”, meaning of the work in its doing and undoing: the place that defined the very eventuality of its happening (Esposizione universale, 1992; Teatro dell’opera, 1993; Essere o non essere, 1995). Completion of the work was moreover constantly deferred, leaving the spectator in perennial expectation: just what the artist always feels from the start at his worktable, waiting for the work to manifest itself.
In the noughties 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.
Paolini’s poetics and artistic practice as a whole may be characterised as a self-reflective meditation on the dimension of art, on its timeless “classicality” and its perspective without vanishing point. By means of photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
, plaster cast
Plaster cast
A plaster cast is a copy made in plaster of another 3-dimensional form. The original from which the cast is taken may be a sculpture, building, a face, a fossil or other remains such as fresh or fossilised footprints – particularly in palaeontology .Sometimes a...
s and drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
his intention is always to inquire, with great conceptual rigour, into the tautological and at the same time metaphysical nature of artistic practice.
Exhibitions
Since his first solo show (RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, 1964) Paolini has exhibited in art galleries and museums worldwide. Collaboration with avant-garde Italian galleries of the 1960s and 1970s (La Salita, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
; Galleria Notizie, Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
; Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
; Galleria del Leone, Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
; La Tartaruga, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
; L'Attico, Rome; Studio Marconi, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
; Modern Art Agency, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
) was swiftly integrated with regular presence in important foreign galleries (from 1971 Paul Maenz, Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
; from 1972 Sonnabend
Ileana Sonnabend
Ileana Sonnabend was a dealer of 20th century art. She ran a contemporary art gallery in Paris during the early 1960s. After leaving Paris, she opened a Sonnabend Gallery in New York City in 1971, at 420 West Broadway, in SoHo...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
; from 1973 Annemarie Verna, Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
; from 1976 Yvon Lambert
Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. There are two locations; one in Paris and the second in New York City.-History:...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
; from 1977 Lisson Gallery
Lisson Gallery
The Lisson Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Bell Street, Lisson Grove, London, founded by Nicholas Logsdail in 1967. The gallery represents such artists as Ai Weiwei, John Latham, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Jonathan Monk, Julian Opie, Richard Wentworth and Turner Prize winners Anish Kapoor...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
). Since the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
Paolini has mainly been represented by the galleries Christian Stein, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
; Massimo Minini, Brescia
Brescia
Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 197,000. It is the second largest city in Lombardy, after the capital, Milan...
; Alfonso Artiaco, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
; Yvon Lambert
Yvon Lambert Gallery
Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. There are two locations; one in Paris and the second in New York City.-History:...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Marian Goodman, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
The great anthological exhibitions took off towards the late 1970s (Istituto di Storia dell'Arte dell'Università di Parma, Parma
Parma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
, 1976; Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach
Mönchengladbach
Mönchengladbach , formerly known as Münchengladbach, is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located west of the Rhine half way between Düsseldorf and the Dutch border....
, 1977; Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
, 1977; Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes, Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, 1978; Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...
, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, touring to The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, 1980) and culminated in the second half of the 1980s (Le Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne
Villeurbanne
Villeurbanne is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France.It is situated northeast of Lyon, with which it forms the heart of the second-largest metropolitan area in France after that of Paris. Villeurbanne is the second-largest city in the department.-History:The current location of...
, 1984, touring to Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
and Charleroi
Charleroi
Charleroi is a city and a municipality of Wallonia, located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. , the total population of Charleroi was 201,593. The metropolitan area, including the outer commuter zone, covers an area of and had a total population of 522,522 as of 1 January 2008, ranking it as...
; Staatsgalerie
Neue Staatsgalerie
The Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany was designed by the British firm James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates, although largely accredited solely to partner James Stirling. It was constructed in the 1970s and opened to the public in 1984....
, Stuttgart, 1986; Castello di Rivoli
Castle of Rivoli
thumb|300px|The unifinished façade by [[Filippo Juvarra]].thumb|300px|Remains of the connection between Juvarra's section and the Manica Lunga.The Castle of Rivoli is a former Residence of the Royal House of Savoy in Rivoli...
, Rivoli, 1986; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, or the National Gallery of Modern Art , is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, dedicated to modern art....
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, 1988; Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Villa delle Rose, Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, 1990). Outstanding recent solo shows were held in Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
(Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum, 1998), Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
(Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, 1999), Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
(Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti, 2001), Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
(Fondazione Prada, 2003), Winterthur
Winterthur
Winterthur is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people. In the local dialect and by its inhabitants, it is usually abbreviated to Winti...
(Kunstmuseum Winterthur
Kunstmuseum Winterthur
Kunstmuseum Winterthur is an art museum in Winterthur, Switzerland run up today by the local Kunstverein, founded in CHK...
, 2005) and Münster
Münster
Münster is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also capital of the local government region Münsterland...
(Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 2005).
Group exhibitions, innumerable since his participation in the 1961 Premio Lissone, include the shows connected with Arte Povera
Arte Povera
Arte Povera is a modern art movement. The term was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether...
(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
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
1970; Contemporanea, Rome 1973; Projekt '74, Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
1974; Europe in the Seventies, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and touring through the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
1977-78; Westkunst, Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
1981; ‘60-'80': Attitudes/concepts/images, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
1982; An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
1984; The European Iceberg, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
1985; Transformations in Sculpture, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
1985; Bilderstreit, Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
1989; 1965-1975: Reconsidering the Object of Art, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
1995; The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-82, Minneapolis and touring 2003-05). Paolini has appeared several times at documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
Kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, 1992) and the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1970, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1993, 1995, 1997).
Set Design
In the course of his career Paolini has also worked in the theatreScenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...
, from the sets and costumes for Vittorio Alfieri
Vittorio Alfieri
Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....
’s Bruto II, directed by Gualtiero Rizzi (1969), to his collaboration with Carlo Quartucci and the Zattera di Babele in the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
. Outstanding recent projects include the sets for Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
’s Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
(2005) and Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
(2007) at the Teatro di San Carlo
Teatro di San Carlo
The Real Teatro di San Carlo is an opera house in Naples, Italy. It is the oldest continuously active such venue in Europe.Founded by the Bourbon Charles VII of Naples of the Spanish branch of the dynasty, the theatre was inaugurated on 4 November 1737 — the king's name day — with a performance...
in Naples, directed by Federico Tiezzi.