Conversazione tra le rovine (1927)

De Chirico, Giorgio (1888-1978)

Conversazione tra le rovine (Conversation among the Ruins)
1927
Oil on canvas, 130.5 x 97.2 cm
National Gallery of ArtWashington

A man, woman, a small table, chair, and two fragments of walls float on an octagonal, straw-colored floor amid a landscape with bare, rolling, olive-green hills in this stylized, vertical painting. The man and woman have pale skin and are positioned on opposite sides of the table from each other. To our left, the heavily-built man stands with his right hand, to our left, planted on the white tablecloth that nearly reaches the floor. He is cleanshaven with curly black hair, a round face, and a prominent nose. His large, dark eyes are deeply set, and a few cross-hatched black lines could indicate shadows or a black eye. His rumpled suit, vest, shirt, and tie are all sand brown. He looks toward a woman seated on our side of the table, opposite him. Her body is angled away from us to our right. Her blond hair is pulled up and she wears a white, sleeveless, floor-length dress that drapes over her shoulders and down her back. Her wooden chair has a teal-blue inset panel at the back and turned legs, and it sits on a pumpkin-orange, rectangular area rug. The paneled floor seems to float in the landscape. The robin’s egg-blue door to our right, opposite the woman, opens inward in its frame, and the corner above the top right is stacked with laid bricks. A sliver of wall alongside the door frame suggests the turning of a corner in the room. To our left, behind the man, a second fragment of yellow-paneled wall stands behind the corner of a dark, mahogany dresser or cabinet carved along its back with curving, S-shaped molding. A framed picture showing the head and shoulders of a woman in tones of white and gray against a periwinkle-blue background hangs at the top of the yellow wall. The curving back of a mint-green, upholstered chair peeks out over the woman’s right shoulder. The floor is set among barren hills with a watery blue sky above. The painting is created mostly with areas of flat colors with outlines and hatched shading in black and white, like pen strokes. The artist signed the painting on the floating floor near the lower right corner, “G. de Chirico.” (NGA)