Head of a Man, in profile

​

Graphite.

Signed ‘G.C.’

6 ½ x 4 ½ inches (167 x 115 mm)

 

Provenance:

The artist, given as a gift to

Giorgio Castelfranco, 1923.

 

Exhibited:

Rome and New York, Galleria Odyssia, De Chirico: disegni 1919-1923, 1972, p. 5, illustrated.

 

In the early 1920’s, de Chirico turned his back on the Metaphysical paintings that he had executed between 1910-1919. The cultural climate in Italy had changed since the war and a need to return to ‘order’ was seen in most art forms.

Di Chirico, living in Rome, frequented museums and copied the antique masters in the hopes of recapturing the monumentality of classicism. He first worked with heads and nude figures and then portraits including numerous self-portraits in his renewed search for the skills of the past.

The present drawing, Head of a Man, exemplified the redirection of his task. It was only later that he added a baroque veneer to the ancient mold that so attacked him