It features a quintessential metaphysical theme: mannequins, now offered up again in a “romantic” key within rooms in which the piles of objects, often replaced by ancient buildings, spew out of the figures’ innards.

Disappointed by Italian critics’ hostility to Metaphysical painting, Giorgio de Chirico moved from Rome to Paris at the end of 1925, remaining there for six years. He arrived in the city with his partner Raissa Gurevitch, a Ukrainian actress and dancer whom he met when working on the set of the opera/ballet La morte di Niobe, put to music by his brother Alberto Savinio. His return to Paris marked the start of a period of great new inspiration, compared by critics to his first Metaphysical period (1911-19). 

This new creative phase was stimulated by the favourable climate, despite being undermined by major misunderstandings, which convinced de Chirico to return to Paris where, from the end of the war, his painting garnered huge intellectual and commercial success thanks to the interest of the Surrealists, the spiritual heirs of Apollinaire. The initial alliance between de Chirico and the group headed by André Breton is documented in the famous photos taken by Man Ray, in which the Italian painter presides over the activities of the newly founded movement in their general headquarters on Rue de Grenelle.¹ De Chirico’s renewed enthusiasm for Paris is evident in his writings of the time: “Like Athens at the time of Pericles, Paris is now the quintessential city of art and intellect. It is there that every man worthy of being called an artist should seek recognition of his worth.”² Nevertheless, in 1925 the Surrealists began to criticise the artist for his return to the Italian tradition, which they considered to be a reactionary about-turn to the avant-garde. In 1926, the year when Les Tendresses cruelles (Cruel Tenderness) was painted, his pre-announced break away from Breton’s orthodox Surrealism became inevitable and inexorable following the “disfigured” reproduction of one of de Chirico’s recent paintings in the magazine of the group La Révolution surréaliste.³

Starting in 1922, having freed himself of the links that had tied him since 1919 to Mario Broglio, founder of Valori plastici magazine and the eponymous collection, de Chirico re-established his commercial relationship with the Parisian gallerist Paul Guillaume, who offered him a much sought-after solo exhibition that year. In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Breton described the fundamental role played by the painter and his brother in the creation of “…a real modern mythology”.⁴ Just before moving to Paris, de Chirico also forged a connection with Léonce Rosenberg, the gallery owner famous for supporting Cubism between the two wars. 

Rosenberg went on to present the painter’s recent works in May 1925. De Chirico divided his new production between the two gallery owners. In January 1926, he signed a contract with Guillaume in which he undertook to provide him with half of his new paintings, entitling him “for one year from this day [to] the first vision of the paintings I do during this period of time.”⁵ 

Les Tendresses cruelles was one of them. It appeared, for the first time, in the solo exhibition organised by Guillaume in June 1926, for which the collector Dr Albert Barnes from Philadelphia (1875-1951, former owner of the Composizione metafisica [Metaphysical Composition] of 1916 in this collection) wrote the catalogue preface, defending de Chirico’s recent classical-style production.⁶ That same year Barnes was portrayed by de Chirico sitting with one of the artist’s paintings on a similar subject (fig. 1) behind him. 

It features a quintessential metaphysical theme: mannequins, now offered up again in a “romantic” key within rooms in which the piles of objects, often replaced by ancient buildings, spew out of the figures’ innards. The pairs of mannequins, which are mostly asexual and in poses similar to those of the Christian pietà, reveal the search for intimate ties and familiar certainties in that which de Chirico calls the “great stone embrace” of a “maternal” Paris.⁷ The painting title is handwritten, probably by Guillaume, on the back of the original frame, which was uncovered, together with the stretchers, during recent restoration work.⁸ Irritated letters from de Chirico to the art dealer tell us that Guillaume was continuing the practice, begun by Apollinaire before the war and certainly inspired by the writings of de Chirico himself, of giving these paintings poetic and literary titles. In the 1920s, de Chirico, to whom the Surrealists now also attributed arbitrary titles, demanded the right to name his own works with more descriptive and, in his own words, less “mind-boggling” titles.⁹ 

Les Tendresses cruelles formed part of the collection of the writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues, who had close ties with Surrealism and was married to Bona Tibertelli, niece of the Ferrara-based painter Filippo de Pisis (Luigi Filippo Tibertelli), whom de Chirico frequented assiduously in Ferrara during the war and with whom he renewed and deepened his friendship in the late 1920s in Paris. 

The work entered the Cerruti Collection before 1993. 

Silvia Loreti

¹Reproduced on the cover of the first issue of La Révolution surréaliste, 1 December 1924.

²G. de Chirico, “Vale Lutetia” (February 1925), in De Chirico 1985, p. 271.

³Breton 1926, p. 32.

⁴Despite the project highlighted by the correspondence with Guillaume in 1915-16, de Chirico had to wait until 1922 for the dealer to offer him a solo exhibition in his gallery (21 March - 1 April).

⁵Fagiolo dell’Arco, Baldacci 1984, p. 206.

⁶Paris 1926.

⁷G. de Chirico, “Salve Lutetia” (1927), in De Chirico 1985, p. 276.

⁸I would like to thank the restorer Luisa Mensi for generously sharing the results of her work.

⁹Letter to Jean Cocteau (1 April 1931), in Fagiolo dell’Arco, Baldacci 1984, p. 581.