The Berardo Collection

Italian painter and sculptor trained in graphic design. In the 60s, he recovered the picturesque of Informal Art in concentrating on the basic components of painting: canvas, frame and paint in one colour. Paolini has been considered one of the greatest exponents of Arte Povera since its appearance at the end of the 60s. Although he shares a taste for conceptual ideas with other artists during the 70s, Paolini focused far more on the study of the artistic system registered in museums. The references to Classicism and Neo-Classicism reformulated his ideas on relations between past and present as well as between replica and original. These works anticipate the revivalist tendencies that dominated art at the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s. Between 1972 and 1992, he took part in documenta 5, 6, 8 and 9, in Kassel. In 1984, he took part in the Venice Biennale, in 1985 he exhibited individually at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and, in 1991, at the Castello de Rivoli in Turin.