Lot 124
  • 124

Giorgio de Chirico

Estimate
800,000 - 1,200,000 USD
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Description

  • Giorgio de Chirico
  • Gli Archeologi (The Archaeologists)
  • Signed G. de Chirico (lower right)
  • Oil on canvas
  • 36 1/2 by 29 1/4 in.
  • 92.9 by 74.4 cm

Provenance

Il Collezionista, Milan
Vigorelli Collection, Milan
Egisto Marconi, Milan
Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above in the 1970s and sold: Sotheby's, London, October 17, 2014, lot 4)
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

Condition

This work is in very good condition. Canvas is not lined. Surface is clean and well preserved. There are a few thin stable vertical lines of craquelure in the background, notable to the right of the right hand figure and in the thickest areas of white impasto. Faint horizontal stretcher bar mark at center. Small planar deformation at the lower right hand corner under the signature. Very minor old frame abrasion around the extreme perimeter. Under UV light there is a thin varnish which fluoresces lightly. There is one small spot of inpainting in the lower left corner, otherwise fine.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

"Anthropomorphic creatures with large ovoid heads, seated in pensive poses and holding complicated constructions in their bellies, are all plastic metaphors for doubt and intellectual research, for that adventurous voyage that leads to intuition and to revelation."
—Paolo Baldacci
(in Giorgio de Chirico, Betraying the Muse (exhibition catalogue), Paolo Baldacci Gallery, New York, 1994, p. 172)


The term 'metaphysical' had first been given to de Chirico's paintings in 1914 by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire and referred to the enigmatic quality of his urban landscapes. The development of this imagery, comprising architectural and sculptural motifs, city squares and classical figures, presents not only a turning point in his own art, but also laid the foundation for Surrealist iconography, which was to flourish in the following decade. Creating a world of enigma and uncertainty, verging between dream and reality, and depicting a condition which André Breton described as the "irremediable human anxiety," de Chirico's metaphysical works had a tremendous influence on the development of Surrealist theories and aesthetics. It was these "powerful conceptions, so dramatically expressed in his paintings, [that] served as a spiritual point of departure for the Surrealists and provided a direct, significant and substantial contribution to Surrealist art" (Laura Rosenstock, "De Chirico's Influence on the Surrealists," in De Chirico (exhibition catalogue), Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1982, p. 113).

One of an important group of paintings that de Chirico developed in the late 1920s, Gli Archeologi is a striking example of the artist’s return to classicism during this period. Having established himself with his extraordinary Metaphysical paintings of the 1910s, in the November-December 1919 issue of Valori Plastici (a publication that had previously been a platform for the Metaphysical artists) de Chirico declared a new allegiance: "My own conscience is quite clear, and I am the bearer of three words which I wish to be the seal of all my work: Pictor classicus sum’" (quoted in El siglo de Girogio de Chirico (exhibition catalogue), Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, 2007, p. 526). Aligning himself with the wider artistic ‘return to order’ that prevailed in the post-war period de Chirico began to develop a distinctly new style that would go on to define his paintings of the 1920s and 1930s. This development was widely criticised by the Surrealists who had been so influenced by the curious dream-like quality of his Metaphysical works and now felt betrayed by his return to the seemingly more rational and ordered classical world. However, whilst the works that followed articulated a new direction, they maintained something of both the distinctive visual language that characterized de Chirico’s earlier works and the Metaphysical spirit of existing in their own place and time.

The present work belongs to a series that de Chirico began work on in the latter half of the 1920s. He kept the faceless mannequins of his earlier works but reinvented them in a new guise. Larger and more statuesque, de Chirico presents the figures in pairs, most often seated, and with a profusion of shapes and constructions tumbling from their chests into their laps. De Chirico suggested a source for the distinctive physiognomy of these figures, describing them in terms of statues seen "in a Gothic cathedral...representing seated saints and apostles... The very short legs—covered by the folds of the garments—and the folds themselves formed a kind of base, an essential foundation suitable for supporting the monumental trunk" (quoted in Ibid., p. 527). The lighter handling of the figures in these later works imbues them with a softer and more human aspect and reflects the influence of the studies of Old Masters that de Chirico had made at the beginning of the 1920s and his subsequent work in tempera. In the present work, this takes on an almost tender character in the arrangement of the figures and their inclination towards one another.

De Chirico places the figures adrift in an undetermined space, juxtaposing the anonymity of the figures and their clutch of antique architecture with the modern sofa on which they are seated. This arrangement was a development in the later works of the series, as Ada Masoero describes: "often there was a shift from exteriors to middle-class interiors... Yet the architecture does not lose its role, though it acquires a new connotation: now the toys and slender arches are joined by ruins and fragments of architecture... memories of his Greek childhood, but also of his long stays in Rome, and tributes to great history, to the highest tradition on which our culture rests, which, by the presence of these relics from the classical world, assign the title of Gli archeologi to this substantial group of paintings of the late twenties" (Ibid., p. 527).