De Chirico Masterpiece to be Offered for Sale at Bonhams
A magnificent oil on canvas by the renowned artist Giorgio de Chirico (1891-1978) will be offered for sale at Bonhams Impressionist paintings sale at Bonhams in New Bond street on Monday 19 December 2007. Titled ‘Il Trovatore’, the work is estimated at £300,000-400,000.
Painted in c.1960, the work was acquired in 1962 by the father of the present owner. This painting provides a satirical view of the human being as a mere mechanical robot fulfilling his role in a mechanical universe. De Chirico’s transformation of the human into a mechanical object is no parody of man’s slavish submission of power, but rather a psychological portrait.
The great series of painting mannequins were repeated from 1952 until 1960. In the Catalogue Raisonn, it is possible to count six different versions of the “Trovatore”.
The metaphysics of De Chirico’s paintings were aimed at exposing the world of everyday reality as a fa’ade within which a richer, deeper, indefinable and mysterious poetry lay. Trapped, bound and encumbered by all the artifice of physical construction, the sad, lone travelling poet that de Chirico represents can be seen in this painting. The theme of loneliness and abandonment that punctuates this and other mannequins from the First World War reflected de Chirico’s state of mind at this time.
From 1918 his work was exhibited extensively in Europe. He met and married his first wife, the Russian Ballerina Raissa Gurievich in 1924, and together they moved to Paris. In 1928 he held his first exhibition in New York and shortly afterwards, London. In 1930 De Chirico met his second wife, Isabella Pakszwer Far, a Russian, with whom he would remain for the rest of his life. Together they moved to Italy in 1932, finally settling in Rome in 1944.
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