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Lot Essay
Executed in between 1959 and 1968, La strada presents a compelling and rare example of Giorgio de Chirico's 'new Metaphysical' period. Revisiting one of the most entrancing works of de Chirico's early Pittura Metafisica, La strada expresses all the vitality and playfulness of the artist's late production. In the vertiginous perspective of a street, a girl runs after a hoop, while two men in dark suits seem to come to a halt. An abandoned open wagon is waiting in the shade, while some mysterious wrapped objects are reversed on the ground. Despite the unusual atmosphere of the scene, the city is bathed in a warm, benevolent light, while an unidentifiable shadow silently lurks in the background. Although de Chirico revisited many of his early themes during his career, La strada constitutes the only late reworking of Mistero e malinconia di una strada, one of the most influential examples of the artist's Pittura Metafisica.
Mistero e malinconia di una strada, to which La strada closely relates, was executed by de Chirico in 1914. The Surrealist leader André Breton bought that early work from the art dealer Paul Guillaume, at a time of unrestrained enthusiasm and fascination for de Chirico's Pittura Metafisica. De Chirico's early works had in fact been a marking and fulgurating revelation for the Surrealists: in 1916, Breton, seeing Le cerveau de l'enfant exhibited in the window of Guillaume's art gallery, was forced to jump off a bus to look at it in wonder. A few years later, the very same thing happened to Yves Tanguy, who also jumped off the bus to admire the exhibited painting, by then owned by Breton himself. Mistero e malinconia di una strada continued the strong fascination which Le cerveau de l'enfant had first exerted on the Surrealists. It conveys a tenser and more disquieting atmosphere than La strada: deep shadows fill empty spaces, the wagon sits dark and vacuous, even the little girl is condensed into a black ghostly presence.
Completed in 1968, La strada seems to cast an ironic, even self-parodying look onto the much revered Mistero e malinconia di una strada. The Surrealists would have been receptive of the threatening sexual atmosphere of that early work: the girl seems to run towards a menacing, virile shadow and the open, dark wagon seems to arbour in its depth all the unfathomable desires of the unconscious. In La strada that tension is punctured by the two men in bowler hats, as stiff and improbable as a comic duo. The unloaded bags seems to ridicule all the interpretations which the empty wagon in the earlier work had provoked, while the 'real' flesh of the girl and the bright colours of the palette seem to be deliberate ripostes to the tense and anxious ambience of Mystère et mélancolie d'une rue. Maurizio Calvesi has perceived this sense of disenchantment and amusement in the disrupted re-staging of an early Metaphysical masterpiece as characteristic of de Chirico's 'new Metaphysical' production (M. Calvesi, 'The 'New' Metaphysical Period', pp. 7-11, in M. Calvesi, M. Ursino, eds., De Chirico: The New Metaphysics, Rome, 1996). A remarkable example of de Chirico's late production, La strada exemplifies the great impact that Pittura Metafisica had, not only on contemporary art, but also on de Chirico's career, in which it remained a constant - although evolving - presence.
Mistero e malinconia di una strada, to which La strada closely relates, was executed by de Chirico in 1914. The Surrealist leader André Breton bought that early work from the art dealer Paul Guillaume, at a time of unrestrained enthusiasm and fascination for de Chirico's Pittura Metafisica. De Chirico's early works had in fact been a marking and fulgurating revelation for the Surrealists: in 1916, Breton, seeing Le cerveau de l'enfant exhibited in the window of Guillaume's art gallery, was forced to jump off a bus to look at it in wonder. A few years later, the very same thing happened to Yves Tanguy, who also jumped off the bus to admire the exhibited painting, by then owned by Breton himself. Mistero e malinconia di una strada continued the strong fascination which Le cerveau de l'enfant had first exerted on the Surrealists. It conveys a tenser and more disquieting atmosphere than La strada: deep shadows fill empty spaces, the wagon sits dark and vacuous, even the little girl is condensed into a black ghostly presence.
Completed in 1968, La strada seems to cast an ironic, even self-parodying look onto the much revered Mistero e malinconia di una strada. The Surrealists would have been receptive of the threatening sexual atmosphere of that early work: the girl seems to run towards a menacing, virile shadow and the open, dark wagon seems to arbour in its depth all the unfathomable desires of the unconscious. In La strada that tension is punctured by the two men in bowler hats, as stiff and improbable as a comic duo. The unloaded bags seems to ridicule all the interpretations which the empty wagon in the earlier work had provoked, while the 'real' flesh of the girl and the bright colours of the palette seem to be deliberate ripostes to the tense and anxious ambience of Mystère et mélancolie d'une rue. Maurizio Calvesi has perceived this sense of disenchantment and amusement in the disrupted re-staging of an early Metaphysical masterpiece as characteristic of de Chirico's 'new Metaphysical' production (M. Calvesi, 'The 'New' Metaphysical Period', pp. 7-11, in M. Calvesi, M. Ursino, eds., De Chirico: The New Metaphysics, Rome, 1996). A remarkable example of de Chirico's late production, La strada exemplifies the great impact that Pittura Metafisica had, not only on contemporary art, but also on de Chirico's career, in which it remained a constant - although evolving - presence.