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Lot Essay
Significant in his own time as a great inspiration to the Surrealists, De Chirico’s incredible artistic influence during the early 20th Century remains significant today. Extended through the reprisals of Andy Warhol who created a series inspired by De Chirico, he furthermore remains the original catalyst to the contemporary Surrealism evidenced in the work of Julie Curtiss and others today.
I giocattoli del principe (The Playthings of the Prince), painted in 1972, is a reworking of an important earlier work entitled Playthings of the Prince, resident in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Depicting almost identical scenes in which the details are skilfully and meticulously executed, this work differs only from the earlier version in that de Chirico has introduced a more complex arrangement of objects in the foreground and a classical statue, faintly visible in the distance. Both works share in common the same dramatic architectural features, including the prominent tent in the foreground, an enigmatic structure that both exists as a substantial presence yet conceals its contents. With incongruous, impossible perspectives and suspenseful shadows, De Chirico’s works create an environment beyond physical reality, bathed in twilight, on the cusp of night and day, or perhaps within both at once.
The work aligns with De Chirico’s series of "metaphysical" works where importance is given to the reallocation of reality and where the still life vocabulary is usually fantastic and based on intuition. De Chirico aimed to take commonplace objects and buildings out of their natural environment with the idea of suggesting a counter reality which would communicate with the subconscious mind.
I giocattoli del principe (The Playthings of the Prince), painted in 1972, is a reworking of an important earlier work entitled Playthings of the Prince, resident in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Depicting almost identical scenes in which the details are skilfully and meticulously executed, this work differs only from the earlier version in that de Chirico has introduced a more complex arrangement of objects in the foreground and a classical statue, faintly visible in the distance. Both works share in common the same dramatic architectural features, including the prominent tent in the foreground, an enigmatic structure that both exists as a substantial presence yet conceals its contents. With incongruous, impossible perspectives and suspenseful shadows, De Chirico’s works create an environment beyond physical reality, bathed in twilight, on the cusp of night and day, or perhaps within both at once.
The work aligns with De Chirico’s series of "metaphysical" works where importance is given to the reallocation of reality and where the still life vocabulary is usually fantastic and based on intuition. De Chirico aimed to take commonplace objects and buildings out of their natural environment with the idea of suggesting a counter reality which would communicate with the subconscious mind.