NIKOS ENGONOPOULOS (1907-1985) Muse à Ferrare

NIKOS ENGONOPOULOS (1907-1985)
Muse à Ferrare
signé en grec et daté "1958" en bas à droite
huile sur toile
55 x 45 cm. (21 5/8 x 17 11/16in.)

signed in Greek and dated "1958" lower right
oil on canvas
Provenance
Christie's London, The Greek Sale, December 14, 1993, lot 34.
Private collection.

Literature
Ta Nea tis Technis newspaper, no. 57, April 1997, p. 2 (illustrated).
K. Perpinioti-Agazir, Nikos Engonopoulos, Son Univers Pictural, exhibition catalogue and catalogue raisonée, Benaki Museum, Athens 2007, no. 609, p. 303 (illustrated), p. 460 (catalogued and illustrated).

A beautiful and captivating work, Muse in Ferrara pays homage to one of the most celebrated pictures of modern art, Giorgio de Chirico's Disquieting Muses painted in Ferrara, Italy in 1917. Ferrara is the metaphysical city par excellence for de Chirico because while he was stationed there as a corporal from 1915 to 1918, he met with artist Carlo Carrá and their brief but intense friendship led to the foundation of the Pittura Metafisica group. This early surrealist school born in Ferrara in 1917 proved to be instrumental not only to the work of such leading surrealists as Max Ernst, Magritte, and Dali, but also to the development of the 20th century European avant-garde.

Elegant, mysterious and utterly seductive, Engonopoulos's slender and sensual muse sets up a system of poetic metaphor to explore the uncharted pathways of the mind. Wearing the Spanish Morion Helmet which was popular with the foot soldiers of European armies in the 16th and 17th centuries, and holding a spear-like cane, she echoes de Chirico's Hector and Andromache sculpture that guards the entrance courtyard of the artist's home museum in Rome. To emphasize her presence as a guardian, the artist painted her skirt and vest in the colours of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, a military honour unit in the Vatican recognised by its dazzling Renaissance-era uniform striped in red, dark blue, and yellow. Applied side by side, Engonopoulos's signature enamel-like bright colours invite the viewer to a festive ritual of pure colour.1

The muse is standing before a stone wall with an arched opening that recalls de Chirico's famous arcaded piazzas (compare The Enigma of a Day, 1914.) The opening, which functions as a picture within a picture, leads to a garden in the foreground and a building with a spire in the distance, vaguely suggesting the background structures in de Chirico's Disquieting Muses. Here, in a typical surrealist fashion, Engonopoulos envisioned a subversively irrational image by replacing Castello Estense, Ferarra's most iconic medieval landmark, with a dome alluding to Florence's famous Renaissance Cathedral.

Although de Chirico's influence is detectable, Engonopoulos's faceless muse departs from the iconography of the mannequin as featured in the work of the Italian master. She is not 'disquieted'; on the contrary she fully experiences an everyday reality bound with traditions and myths.2 As noted by N. Loizidi, an expert on surrealism, "the Greek painter's mannequins are not generic androgynous figures but persons with clearly defined gender characteristics. Women are represented with voluptuous curves and daringly rendered nipples."3

1. Engonopoulos had designed colourful costumes for many theatrical performances and had been involved with fashion from an early age, publishing the magazine La Mode Grecque in French and German. See N. Andrikopoulou, Tracing the footsteps of Nikos Engonopoulos [in Greek], Potamos editions, Athens 2003, p. 100.
2. See D. Papastamos, preface to the Nikos Engonopoulos retrospective exhibition catalogue [in Greek], National Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens 1983, p. 8.
3. N. Loizidi, "Regarding Jef, Midnight's Great Automaton" [in Greek] in Location: Engonopoulos, exhibition catalogue, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki 2007, p.11.