Artists

 

Giulio Paolini, a key figure on the international art scene and one of the leading exponents of Arte Povera (albeit in a strictly conceptual form), was born in Genoa, Italy in 1940.

 

At the beginning of his career, with the work Disegno geometrico (1960), he established the foundations of his modus operandi: not the creation of new images, but an investigation into the constitutive elements of artmaking. His distinctive trait is his ability to combine classical quotation with philosophical reflection, questioning the role of the author and the viewer's vision. His research moves toward a formal and expository perfection that transforms the canvas, the museum space, and the plaster cast into instruments of metaphysical inquiry. This technique explores the enigma of creation through forms that have a single objective: to capture the essence of artistic language and the distance between the work and its representation through rigorous aesthetic balance.

 

The artist collaborates with key movements and currents, primarily Arte Povera (a movement that investigates the relationship between art and life, although Paolini focuses on the intellectual dimension of the medium) and Conceptual Art (an ideology according to which the idea and the logical process prevail over the aesthetic and material result).

Paolini participated in groundbreaking international exhibitions such as the historic group exhibition curated by Germano Celant at the Galleria La Bertesca (1967, Genoa), several editions of Documenta in Kassel (starting in 1972) and on numerous occasions at the Venice Biennale, where he exhibited since 1970. Over the course of his career he received prestigious awards, including the Feltrinelli Prize for Painting in 1995 and the Praemium Imperiale for painting in 2022.

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His works are exhibited in numerous international museums and private art collections, such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Tate Modern (London), the MoMA (New York), the Castello di Rivoli (Turin), the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (Rome) and the Guggenheim Museum (New York).