Giulio Paolini

Giulio Paolini was born in Genoa in 1940. In 1942 his family moves to Bergamo owing to his father’s job. in 1952 the family settles down in Turin. Paolini studies graphic art and he grows familiar with art by visiting exhibitions and galleries. After several attempts at experimentation, in 1960 he makes Geometric Drawing, a full-fledged statement of intents; the work will forever remain the charter for all his artistic explorations.

His early friendships in the art world lead to the debut of his career, which begins in 1964 with his first solo show at Galleria La salita in Rome. In he second half of the 1960s, he consolidates his conceptual assumptions and his position of total independence from the effervescent atmosphere that dominates the period. Germano Celant, whom he had met through Carla Lonzi, writes the catalogue essay for his solo show at Galleria del Leone in Venice in 1967, and gets him involved in the nascent Arte Povera scene. Celant invites the artist to participate in the events he curates from 1967 to 1971. In the early 1970s, Paolini forges international ties and holds numerous gallery and museum exhibitions. Major retrospectives of his work are held at Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma (1976), Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1980), Nouveau Musé in Villeurbanne (1984), Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (1986), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte moderna in Rome (1988), Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz (1998), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2003), Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2005), MACRO Museo d’Arte contemporanea in Rome (2013) and Whitechapel Gallery in London (2014). On several occasions he is invited to participate at Documenta kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, 1992) and at the Venice Biennale (1970, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2013).

Declaring his intimate belonging to art history from the outset, Paolini has deliberately stayed inside rooms where art is made, interrogating the very actors of the artistic experience: the author, the viewer, the gaze, the space of the representation. From the analytical studies he performs in the 1960s, Paolini gradually develops toward installations that are formally more complex, and since 2000, he has mainly focused his attention on the act of exhibiting and the artist’s studio. From the start of his career, Paolini has always accompanied his works with notes and writings, collected in several books.