Alberto Savinio, Metaphysical in 1929
The dispersal of a Paris antique dealer’s collection continues in September with four thematic sales focusing on 19th and 20th-century prints and photographs, drawings, and modern and contemporary art. The latest installment features a poetic painting by Alberto Savinio, Giorgio de Chirico’s brother.
Estimate: €150,000/200,000
Readers of La Gazette may recall the successful beginning of this dispersal in May, when Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Shipwreck fetched €546,000. Focusing on 19th and 20th-century paintings and drawings, the highly discreet art lover added Alberto Savinio to his collection. The particularly enigmatic Machine pour féconder les arbres (Machine for Fertilizing Trees) sprang from the artist’s imagination in 1929. Influenced by Greece, home of mythology, where he was born and lived until his late teens, the Italian painter also drew upon Etruscan, Egyptian, Hebraic, Roman and Nordic sources to create his whimsical world. In Anthologie de l’humour noir (Anthology of Black Humor), André Breton, the father of Surrealism, wrote: “The whole, as-yet-unformed modern myth rests at its origins on two bodies of work that are almost indistinguishable in spirit, by Alberto Savinio and his brother, Giorgio de Chirico.” The Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris hosted Savinio’s first show two years before he painted this work with a metaphysical bent, as the artist himself put it. It was in the Jeanne Castel Collection before being acquired by the owner parting with it today.
UNE COLLECTION INEDITE – Fifth Sale – Modern and Contemporary Paintings
Wednesday 25 September 2024 – 14:00 (CEST) – Live
Salle 1 – Hôtel Drouot – 75009 Paris
Daguerre
