Giulio Paolini

Giulio Paolini
Era finora
2021
Plaster casts, graphite and red pencil on wall, collage

The installation by Giulio Paolini (1940), created specifically for the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, reflects – as always in Paolini’s work – on the gaze as an act of knowledge and as a means of creating the world. Here, the gazes are two: one feminine and one masculine, represented by two plaster casts cut in half and placed facing each other.

Between them unfolds a visual sequence of images evoking distant times and places: Etruscan landscapes and Pompeii excavations, medieval reliefs, Renaissance interiors, Saffo from the Museo Archeologico di Napoli, Portrait of a Woman by Pollaiolo, a painting by Claude Lorrain, and Self Portrait by Joshua Reynolds.

The title, Era finora (Was Until Now), expresses the idea of a continuity of time and art, where past and present meet in an endless dialogue.