Estorick
Collection of modern italian art
39a Canonbury Square
LONDRA
Tel.: 0044 20 77049522
Orario: 11-18 D 12-17, chiuso L Ma
22 gennaio-13 aprile
Giorgio
de Chirico (1888-1978) was one of the most innovative
and controversial artists of the 20th century. His
enigmatic paintings, with their dream-like imagery of
deserted city squares filled with mysterious shadows,
stopped clocks and sleeping statues, had a profound
influence on modern art.
A
reclining statue of Ariadne, the princess of Greek
mythology, in an empty, sun-drenched piazza, is an
important element of de Chirico’s ‘Metaphysical’
iconography.
According
to legend, Ariadne was abandoned by her lover Theseus on
the desert island of Naxos after he had slain the
Minotaur and escaped from the labyrinth with the aid of
her thread.
This
melancholy subject appealed to the artist, who had a
nostalgic interest in the classical past. A symbol of
exile and loss, the anguished figure of the sleeping
Ariadne haunted de Chirico’s imagination during his
early years in Paris, a time of intense loneliness for
him. The mystery and melancholy found in these pictures,
completed between the spring of 1912 and the autumn of
1913, resonates in his work throughout his long career.
This
exhibition brings together key works of the Ariadne
series from private and public collections around the
world and includes such masterpieces as The
Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913), along with related
drawings and sculptures.
These
iconic works, which were to have such a powerful impact
on the Surrealist paintings of Salvador Dalí and Max
Ernst, are complemented by a selection of later
paintings on the theme of Ariadne, whose serial approach
foreshadows the work of Andy Warhol, a close friend of
de Chirico in the 1970s. The works on display offer
visitors a valuable opportunity to examine the early and
late works in relation to one another and to analyse the
autobiographical symbolism of these haunting images.
Giorgio
de Chirico, Autoritratto, 1922
Toledo, Ohio, The Toledo Museum of Art
