GIORGIO DE CHIRICO (after) : Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire — “Premonitory Portrait”, 1943

By DE CHIRICO Giorgio (1888–1978)

Pierre Roy (1880–1950), after Giorgio de Cherico (1888–1978)
Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire — “Premonitory Portrait”, 1943
Woodcut on laid paper

Signed in the block with the monograms “P.R.” (Pierre Roy, lower left) and “G.C.” (Giorgio de Chirico, lower right); no hand signature, as issued
Dimensions: Sheet 26 × 20 cm (10 1/4 × 7 7/8 in.);
Condition: Good; letterpress text printed on verso (loose leaf as issued); deckle edges; unframed
Period: 1914 (image / block); this impression 1943
Leaf from “Présence d’Apollinaire,” catalogue of the exhibition “Le Temps d’Apollinaire” (organised by Gaston Diehl), Galerie René Breteau, Paris, December 1943 – January 1944; loose-leaf in-4, illustrated with five woodcuts
After Giorgio de Chirico’s 1914 composition, this is the celebrated “premonitory” portrait of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire: a dark profile silhouette marked on the temple by a white circle — uncannily foretelling the head wound Apollinaire would suffer in 1916 — set above an antique poet’s bust wearing dark glasses, a fish and a moulded shell, the metaphysical attributes of the seer. Pierre Roy cut the block in 1914 as the intended frontispiece for Apollinaire’s projected collection “Et moi aussi je suis peintre,” which the war left unpublished; the image finally appeared in the homage volume “Présence d’Apollinaire” (1943), of which the present sheet is the woodcut leaf. The original woodblock is preserved at the Centre Pompidou (from the “Wall of André Breton’s studio”).

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Price : 300,00 € ( 342.00 USD )