Madrid, at Italian Cultural Institute an exhibition puts Paolini and Bertolo in dialogue

On March 7, 2025, at 8 p.m., theItalian Cultural Institute in Madrid will open the exhibition GIULIO PAOLINI AND LUCA BERTOLO. DETRÁS DE LA OBRA (BEHIND THE WORK), curated by Elena Volpato, which for the first time brings together the works of Giulio Paolini (Genoa, 1940), one of the key figures of the new Italian avant-garde movements of the second half of the 20th century, and Luca Bertolo (Milan, 1968), one of the most significant painters of the contemporary art scene. The exhibition, which is part of ARCOmadrid 2025, is produced by the Italian Cultural Institute under the auspices of theItalian Embassy in Spain, with the collaboration of GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino and Fondazione Torino Musei. Detrás de la Obra takes the form of an exhibition that unfolds along a path of reflection on visual art, an art that not only looks at the world but also questions its own status, the limit of representation and the reflexive nature of its practices. The seventeen selected works, which range from installations to paintings and conceptual works, cover a time span from 1963 to 2024, and are the result of a long investigation into the essence of art itself. The curator’s intention is to establish a dialogue between the works of Paolini and Bertolo, which reflect the artists’ incessant questioning of representation and the intrinsic nature of the image. The central themes of the exhibition focus on three aspects that have characterized the work of both artists: the relationship between the recto and verso of the canvas, the ambiguous image status of the flag, and the representation of absence. These themes are echoed in the exhibition rooms of the Institute, a venue that carries with it a symbolic proximity to Velázquez ’s masterpiece Las Meninas, a work that has always stimulated reflections on the nature of art and the function of the image.

Giulio Paolini has played a crucial role in the evolution of contemporary art, becoming a figure of reference for the new avant-garde movements of the second half of the twentieth century. Paolini has placed at the center of his research the very process of artistic creation, a process that is not limited to reproducing the visible world, but which becomes a space for reflection on the very meaning of the work and its ability to evoke something beyond its mere representation. His works explore the roots of art, digging into its most essential and constituent elements, to arrive at a reflection on the image as an enigmatic entity, capable of revealing truths that are never fully made explicit. The work of Luca Bertolo, who began painting thirty years after Paolini, fits into a conceptual continuity with the research initiated by the master. Bertolo, while maintaining a strong affinity with the pictorial tradition, has developed a poetics in which painting becomes a means to explore the impossibility of an accomplished representation. His research focuses on the surface of the canvas as a space for approaching the image, an image that escapes and offers itself only as a paradox, an attempt to say the unspeakable. Bertolo’s approach is characterized by a continuous oscillation between belonging to and distance from art history, contemplation and irony, mimetic painting and mental painting.

The exhibition, which offers a cue to reflect on the language of contemporary art, thus proposes a shared reflection between two generations of artists who, although working in different contexts and times, confront the same fundamental themes: the image, its ability to represent the world and, at the same time, its impenetrability. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Allemandi, which includes contributions from the artists and the curator.

“Our Institute has always promoted and enhanced contemporary Italian art,” says Susi Baldasseroni, acting director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid, "and it is a great privilege for us to be able to exhibit the works of two such significant artists, whom we thank for the generosity and willingness with which they accepted our invitation.

Notes on the artists

Giulio Paolini was born in Genoa on November 5, 1940. In 1942, for reasons related to his father’s profession, his family moved to Bergamo and, in 1952, he settled permanently in Turin. He trained in graphic design and, approaching art, attended exhibitions and galleries. After carrying out some experimentation, in 1960 he made Geometric Drawing, a true declaration of intent that would mark a point of eternal return in his artistic research. His first friendships in the art world marked the beginning of his career, which took shape in 1964 with his first solo exhibition at Galleria La Salita in Rome. In the following years, especially in the second half of the 1960s, he consolidated his conceptual positions and established himself as a figure of total autonomy from the artistic ferment of the time. It was thanks to Carla Lonzi that he came into contact with Germano Celant, who wrote the text for the catalog of one of his solo shows at the Galleria del Leone in Venice in 1967, involving him in the emerging Arte povera scene and inviting him to participate in several exhibitions curated by him between 1967 and 1971.

Beginning in the early 1970s, Paolini made numerous international contacts and held several exhibitions in galleries and museums of international significance. His major anthological exhibitions include those at the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma (1976), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1980), the Nouveau Musée in Villeurbanne (1984), the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (1986), the Galleria Nazionale d’Modern Art in Rome (1988), Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz (1998), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2003), Kunstmuseum in Winterthur (2005), MACRO in Rome (2013), Whitechapel Gallery in London (2014), Fondazione Carriero in Milan (2018), and Castello di Rivoli - Museum of Contemporary Art (2020). He has participated several times in the Kassel Documenta (1972, 1977, 1982, 1992) and the Venice Biennale (1970, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1986, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2013). Beginning with his analytical investigations in the 1960s, his practice has evolved toward increasingly complex installations and installations, focusing since 2000 mainly on the act of exhibiting and the artist’s studio. Since the beginning, Paolini has accompanied his work with writings and notes, which have been collected in several books.

Luca Bertolo, born in Milan in 1968, studied computer science at the State University of Milan before graduating in painting from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in 1998. He has lived in São Paulo, London, Berlin and Vienna and, since 2005, has resided in a small mountain hamlet in the Apuan Alps. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in public and private spaces, including GAM in Turin, MART in Rovereto, Aalst Netwerk in Aalst, MAN in Nuoro, the Prada Foundation in Milan, GNAM in Rome, Centro Pecci in Prato, the Nomas Foundation in Rome, the Zabludowicz Collection in London, MACRO in Rome, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, SpazioA in Pistoia, Arcade in London/Brussels, Marc Foxx in Los Angeles, Galerie Perrotin in Paris, and Pierogi Gallery in New York. In 2024, CEAAC in Strasbourg hosted his first anthological exhibition. Some of his writings have been collected in the book The Child’s Moustache. Writings on Art and Artists (Quodlibet, 2018). In 2022 he edited the Italian edition of James Elkins’ The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (Johan & Levi, 2022) and wrote the afterword to the book Provisional Painting. A Turning Point in Contemporary Art by Raphael Rubinstein (Johan & Levi, 2022). He has been teaching painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna since 2015.

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Madrid, at Italian Cultural Institute an exhibition puts Paolini and Bertolo in dialogue

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