For its centenary, Venini has commissioned the artist Giulio Paolini to create two limited editions, under the titles I colori della Musa, 2021 and Planetario, 2021. Unique works, visible for the first time, together with a series of studies on paper made by the artist on the same theme, in the exhibition La Musa in laguna at Galleria Christian Stein, Corso Monforte 23, Milan, until Saturday 29 January.
The artist born on 5 November 1940 in Genoa and based in Turin presents two plaster reliefs with a neo-classical tone, enhanced by fragments of Murano glass made in the Venini glassworks: the first, I colori della Musa, 2021, represents the Muse, the mythological figure that embodies the supreme ideal of Art, shown while painting and scattering trails of color all around her.
“Various multicolored fragments gravitate around the female figure that observes them and captures them in the images we see,” Giulio Paolini explains. “The Muse offers them to us inside an oval frame; the fragments are taken from the palette – also oval – of Édouard Manet, an object that filled Eugène Delacroix with wonder.”
The second relief, Planetario, 2021, again features the Muse, this time gazing into a mirror, with round pieces of Murano glass that suggest the planets of the solar system, seen by Paolini as the symbol of an absolute dimension.
