Giorgio de Chirico *

(Volos, Greece 1888–1978 Rome)
Cavalli antichi sulle sponde dell’Egeo, 1968, signed, oil on canvas, 78 x 64 cm, framed
This work is accompanied by a photo certificate signed by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco

This work is accompanied by an expertise (in photocopy) issued by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco

Provenance:
Casa de Chirico, Rome (inventory number on the reverse)
Baccigalupi-Favre Collection, Turin
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Rome, Omaggio a de Chirico, Studio d’Arte Campaiola, 2 – 29 May 2002
Viterbo, Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Rocca Albornoz, 31 May – 24 June 2002, exh. cat. p. 114, no. 1/A with ill.
Montecatini Terme, Da de Chirico a Fontana-Gli anni d’oro di Montecatini Terme, 27 September – 3 November 2002, exh. cat. cover image and p. 163 with ill.

Literature:
C. B. Sakraischick (ed.), Catalogo Generale, Giorgio de Chirico, Electa Editrice, Milan 1976, vol. V, Opere dal 1951 al 1974, no. 729 with ill.

Note:
The work takes up a motif painted in Paris at the time of Surrealism, between 1927 and 1928. In this work, the almost 80-year-old painter takes up a theme from his youth with the desire to revive the Hellenistic dream of a temple and a Mediterranean Sea where the energy and vitality of the horse dwells.

Horses are always connected with myth, often combined with a subterranean ‘auto-myography’. The novelty is not in the seemingly-obvious invention, or in the composition that is limned by existing silhouettes: it is all in the colour. Brilliant, topical, déco: it plunges these Dionysian presences into the placid sea of Thessaly, against the Parthenon of childhood

M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, P. Baldacci (ed.), Giorgio de Chirico, Parigi 1924–1929, Edizioni Philippe Daverio, Milan, 1982, p. 124

His horses gallop on beaches sprinkled with ruins of small temples, of broken columns. Mythology and archaeology merge in the memory, in the evocation and in the amused play through which the old artist recalls his Greek origins.

We are in the Sixties, the years of Pop Art, whose artistic language and style often merge with play. But it would be wrong to discuss the influence of Pop Art on De Chirico's painting, better to understand how extraordinarily the artist succeeds in tuning in to his own time. The maestro's greatness can be seen in how he understands the climate of modernity and makes it his own, even if perhaps unconsciously, despite obstinately considering himself "an artist out of time". In so doing he has become a master and an example for the paintings of future generations.

Franco Ragazzi (ed.) Pittura fra Arte e Memoria dell’Arte, in “Da de Chirico a Fontana: Gli anni d’oro di Montecatini Terme”, Art Promoters, Portofino, 2002, exh. cat. p. 179