Massimo Campigli

Grosvenor Gallery, London (probably acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Giancarlo Serafini (ed.), Omaggio a Campigli, Rome, 1972, p. 119, illustrated (titled Donne-fiore)

The canvas is not lined and there is no evidence of retouching under UV light. Apart from some very minor craquelure, mainly to the upper left quadrant, this work is in very good condition.
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According to Franco Basile, Campigli's works are 'imbibed with the light breeze of things past, the sense of expectation is accompanied by the brush strokes of silence, a hidden diary of a world veiled in the gauzes of anxiety, but also illuminated by a private sky and by the lyricism of a timeless haze' (F. Basile, Campigli, Bologna, 1992, p.33). Donne su fondo rosso depicts four hourglass women, located in an undetermined deep pink space. While living in Paris in the 1920s, the artist was influenced by the rappel à l'ordre, which saw a reinterpretation of classicism in the wake of the chaos of World War I. This desire for a return to order was also felt by Picasso and De Chirico, which accounts for their comparable aesthetic, created by the primitive, monumental women occupying spaces in which time appears to be suspended.

The surface of the canvas is very heavily worked and Basile's remarks that he 'spent hours and hours sharpening, scratching out, restyling, repainting and destroying his work' (ibid., p.33) highlight the significance of this process. The frieze-like aesthetic of the work is evidence of Campigli's fascination with the art of the Etruscans and Egyptians, to name just two of his many sources of inspiration.

One particularly striking aspect of Campigli's oeuvre is the distinct lack of men: he painted only women and as he admitted himself: 'my imagination has always dominated reality and I transform the latter to make it more readily acceptable to me [...] in a crowd I only see the beautiful faces, only the women, of course, as in my paintings' (M. Campigli quoted in ibid., p. 42). The present work might well be representative of the multi-faceted complexity of the women that filled his life, a complexity that at once intrigued and terrified him. He has written of the attraction he feels for neurotic women, and the way that he aims to give the women he paints 'a vague, complex expression, one that hypnotises' (M. Campigli quoted in ibid., p. 48).