Paolo Boni’s work has always been marked by its close origins to the earth and to the human. His sources of inspiration, landscapes and human figures, were nourished by his experience as a factory worker specialised in optical instruments. His work is punctuated by a systematic search of the paths that lead from figurative to abstract (1940s until the end of the 1960s), and by his interpretation of cubism and the progressive return to engraving and sculpture (1970s to 1990s).

Quickly, Paolo pokes holes in metallic surfaces in order to allow the paper to come out in the middle of the engraving, which makes it a graphic element in itself. It would later be called ‘graphisculpture’ because of the bas-relief created. This graphic and sculpted work was freeing: it influenced decisively his pictorial work, first by adding other textures which created height differences (1960 to 1965), then through a complete change of the spatial order helped by the lightness obtained through the use of a brand new acrylic paint (1970s to 1980s).

Man’s first steps on the moon in July of 1969 impressed Paolo greatly. This event opened up brackets in his work, and he quit characters and landscapes. He thus engaged himself for a few years in a series of painted and engraved works depicting planes, targets, landing strips and strange floating objects in space. The influence of Italian Renaissance paintings could be felt in Boni’s work, with perspectives, mazes, stripes, checkerboards and brighter colours, around the same time as acrylic paint became available. Throughout these years, in parallel with his pictorial work, Paolo also continued to create some graphisculptures.

The human and the landscape reappeared in his paintings with mixed techniques: paint, paper collages, tarlatan, and felt tip pens. The attraction to the relief resurfaced through painted and cut up woods, bas-reliefs and sculptures, of which the intense creativity was fed by his past experiences (1990s to 2004) and would be the last of his work.