Scuola di Gladiatori. Gladiators in Training. by Giorgio De Chirico, 1888-1978

Giorgio De Chirico, 1888-1978
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Scuola di Gladiatori. Gladiators in Training.

Original etching in black ink. 1928. Signed in pencil. Numbered in pencil from the edition of 100 (71/100). Issued for the album: Le Mystère Laic. Inspired by the text by Jean Cocteau. Printed at the studio of Ducros and Colas, Paris 1928. Published by Editions des Quatre Chemins, Paris 1928. Very Rare.
Ref: Ciranna - De Chirico Opere Grafiche no 4.

Extremely fine impression, printed with plate tone. On pale cream light wove BFK Rives paper. Excellent condition. Full margins. Sheet: 9 1/2 x 7 3/8ins. Plate: 7 x 5 3/8ins
(178x139mm).

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?The Gladiators?, above, and its companion piece opposite are very rare and important examples of the earliest and most important period of De Chirico?s graphic art.

De Chirico played an extremely influential role in the development of European painting in the period from 1920 to 1935. He had first been in Paris in 1911 where he associated with Guillaume Apollinaire whose symbolist/proto-surrealist writing echoed De Chirico? growing ideas about non-reality in art. After returning to Italy during the First War he met Carlo Carra in 1917 and established with him the idea of ?Pittura Metafisica - Metaphysical Painting?. In these works the purpose was to express the ?inner aspect of the objective world?.

It was the development of this ?inner spirituality?, expressed through images of empty architecture or stylised figures, which was to have such a profound effect on the first development of the Surrealist painters. One of the ways that De Chirico established the mood of these metaphysical works, with their links to the nihilism, or the sense of threat, in the writings of such philosophers and writers as Nietzsche or Kafka, was through the use of mythological scenes in which faceless people fight stylised battles. The etching above, and its companion piece opposite, are amongst the very few graphic works in De Chirico?s art executed at this key moment. Impressions appear on the market only very rarely indeed.