DE CHIRICO GIORGIO: (1888-1978)

DE CHIRICO GIORGIO: (1888-1978)

‘A publication on your collection would……render a good service to the cause of our national dignity which today is dragged into the mud by the works
of all these cretins, xenophiles, Francophiles, provincials and boors’

 

DE CHIRICO GIORGIO: (1888-1978) Italian artist, founder of the scuola metafisica art movement which greatly influenced the surrealists. A good A.L.S., Giorgio de Chirico, two pages, large 4to, Rome, 3^rd January 1955, to [Sandro] Rubboli, in Italian. De Chirico writes to accept his correspondent's proposal, commenting 'I am pleased to have my works in the collections of people like you; who know how to distinguish serious painting from modernist bluff and who buys a painting because he sincerely likes it and not because a dealer or an art critic has suggested it for purely commercial purposes' and continuing to state 'I have a “ratto” (40 x 50), but it's only sketched out, and I think it will take me a good week to get it done. In the meantime, if you want the other, bigger “Ratto” from me that you have already seen, I could send it right away'. De Chirico also encourages his correspondent to create a publication of the works he has collected with beautiful colour plates, remarking 'I assure you it would be very successful; it would sell all the copies and it would also be in contrast to the usual volumes published by the “Il Milione” gallery, such as the “Feroldi Collection”, where most of the works reproduced belong to the modernist style and therefore increase the confusion of ideas among the public. A publication on your collection would, moreover, also have an educational, moralising, clarifying purpose and would render a good service to the cause of our national dignity which today is dragged into the mud by the works of all these cretins, xenophiles, Francophiles, provincials and boors. If you wish, I could write a text for this publication, which I would do for free, hoping to please you' and further writes to express his approval of the work of Caselli, 'a serious and intelligent young painter who has always refused to keep up with the so-called modern “trends” of Parisian origin. The volume dedicated to the portraits of the maestro Toscanini, executed by Caselli, is a beautiful edition both as regards the print and as regards the choice and execution of the three-colour, or four-colour process'. In a postscript De Chirico adds that he is sending a story by his wife, published in Il Giornale d'Italia which 'was very successful, but also aroused much anger in modern circles'. A letter of excellent content. One small area of paper loss to the upper edge and a very minor paperclip rust stain to the upper left corner, neither of which affect the text or signature, otherwise VG

Silvano Caselli (1921-1995) Italian painter whose work Toscanini nella pittura di Caselli was published in 1953.