(Volos, Greece, 1888–1978 Rome) Calligramme. La grace exilée, 1931, signed G. de Chirico, oil on canvas, 27 x 41 cm, framed, (PP)

Photo certificate:
Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico, Rome 26 July 2012, no. 032 07 12 OT

Provenance:
Galleria Milano, Milan (1932), (label verso); Galleria del Milione, Milan, inventory no. 6954 (label and stamp verso); Private Collection, Italy (acquired there in 1954 by the father of the current owner);

Literature:
Maurizio Fagiolo Dell’Arco, ‘Il Cosmo dei metafisici. fratelli de Chirico, l’Ermetismo e l’Apocalisse’, in: exh. cat. Cosmos, Da Goya a De Chirico, da Friedrich a Kiefer. L’arte alla scoperta dell’infinito, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 26 March - 23 July 2000, page 107 with ill. (with the title: Apocalisse sulla spiaggia)

The present work served as a model for one of the 66 lithographs illustrating Guillaume Apollinaire’s literary work ”Calligrammes“. The central subject of this series is the sun touching the horizon or appearing in some unusual dimension. “In the summer of 1930, Jean Paulhan, director of the Gallimard editions, entrusts Giorgio de Chirico with the task of illustrating a sumptuous edition of Calligrammes by Apollinaire. De Chirico sets to work, misrepresenting as he translates. From the handful of hints to celestial phenomena found in the verses of his friend (Apollinaire talks of rainbows, stars, the sun, rain and sea), de Chirico develops a whole series of farces balanced between the poetic and the occult, with unexpected variations on the theme. To understand many of these mysterious images, I regularly turned to the pages of his novel Hebdomeros, published a few months before, which was popular with surrealists: “an air of symbolism floated on nature”.
(…) “ a new magic has come down to earth”. The few known paintings on the theme of suns and moons on the seashore present an alternative of huts and beaches, farce and temples: a happy “alliance between heaven and earth”. Paintings like these (some yet to be discovered) present, above all, the enigma of dawn married with the mystery of sunset, the hours so dear to the master Nietzsche and his idea of melancholy.”
(from MAURIZIO FAGIOLO DELL’ARCO, Il Cosmo dei metafisici. I fratelli de Chirico, L’Ermetismo e l’Apocalisse, Bompiani, 2009, page 105-108)