Giorgio de Chirico

Private Collection, Rome
Marisa Del Re Gallery, Inc., New York
Acquired from the above in 1985

Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island Collects the Figure & Landscape, 1870s-1980s, 1990
Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Surrealism: A Cross Cultural Perspective, 2000-01

Claudio Bruni Sakraischik, ed., Catalogo General Giorgio de Chirico, opere dal 1931 al 1950**, vol. 8, Milan, 1987, no. 794, illustrated n.p.

This painting has probably never been restored. It is stretched on its original stretcher with its full inscription clearly visible on the reverse. The black tape surrounding the picture has become un-adhered in almost all areas and there are scratches in the upper right, lower right and to a lesser degree in the upper and lower left corners: these appear to be inherent to the artist's process. To the bulk of the painting there are no visible restorations. Please note: This lot and that which follows it are printed in inverse order in the small-format catalogue which accompanies our catalogue. Please refer to our main catalogue, or the e-Catalogue available online, for the correct order in which the works will be auctioned (Lot 123 will be Jacques Lipchitz, Arlequin à la clarinette and lot 124 will be Giorgio de Chirico, Piazza d'Italia).
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.

Painted in his signature metaphysical style, Piazza D'Italia belongs to a series of De Chirico's remarkably enigmatic Italian cityscapes embedded with a timeless, uncanny quality. Driven by a modernist impulse, de Chirico created works that juxtaposed the classical within a modern setting. Referencing his formal academic training in Germany and Greece and drawing inspiration as he frequently did from classical mythology, De Chirico here uses a plaster cast of the mythical figure of Ariadne. Ariadne was a passive object of desire whom the Greek-born artist was deeply fascinated with, as the melancholic story of Ariadne had great symbolic meaning for de Chirico. De Chirico equated the Hellenistic figure with painting itself- her golden thread, which led Theseus out of the labyrinth, becoming a metaphor for the artist's quest for knowledge and perfection in painting (Giorgio de Chirico, Il Signor Dudron, Florence, 1998, p. 7).

De Chirico juxtaposes this sculpture from antiquity with evidence of the industrial age, referenced specifically by the steam train passing in the background. As with many of his paintings, this underscored de Chirico's idea of time versus stillness, as he invested this composition with a suspended narrative, simultaneously infusing the painting with both a sense of unknown mystery and a familiar, nostalgic quality. Piazza D'Italia visibly embodies Surrealist credo, as de Chirico himself said: "What I hear is worth nothing; there is only what I see with my eyes open and, even more, what I see with them closed" (André Breton, Le surréalisme et la peinture, Paris, 1928, p. 38). Also evident here is the influence of Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin on de Chirico's artistic trajectory. Like Böcklin, de Chirico's painting reveals the importance of classical myth while possessing an element of symbolic romanticism. As de Chirico himself commented: "[My art is a] frightening astuteness, it returns from beyond unexplored horizons to fix itself in metaphysical eternity, in the terrible solitude of an inexplicable lyricism..."(quoted in P. Baldacci, De Chirico, The Metaphysical Period 1888-1919, Milan, 1997, no. 114, p. 326).