Giorgio de Chirico
Les gladiateurs

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Giorgio de Chirico
Les gladiateurs, 1928
oil on canvas
116 x 88 cm │ 45 ½ x 34 ½ in.

Arbiter, beginning of the III century b.C., Vatican City, Musei Vaticani (from the mosaic from the Bath of Caracalla.

Giorgio de Chirico, Les gladiateurs, 1928. Detail. The arbiter is a clear reference to the ancient Roman era mosaic.

Inspired by Roman mosaics, as early as 1928 the paintings of gladiators became a metaphor of feelings and visions related to the artist’s childhood and unconscious. The figures of arbiters who look out from the windows on either side of the scene symbolize the spectator invited to attend the show, and the artist himself who quotes in this case one of the themes most dear to him in that period: the horses by the sea on the background of ancient ruins.

Giorgio de Chirico Chevaux devant la mer, 1926, detail.

Giorgio de Chirico Les gladiateurs, 1928, detail.

The central wall of the Hall des gladiateurs in Léonce Rosenberg’s apartment on Rue de Longchamp in Paris (from Vogue, 1929).

Léonce Rosenberg in his warehouse (after 1932). On the right the central picture of the Hall. Gladiateurs au repos, 1924.

Léonce Rosenberg, the house on rue de Longchamp and the Hall des Gladiateurs.

The apartment of the Parisian merchant Léonce Rosenberg was decorated by de Chirico and other artists who referred to the Galerie de l’Effort Moderne. Born in Paris on September 12 1879, Léonce Rosenberg, the son of Alexandre, owner of a gallery in the rue de l’Opera, belonged to that elite who combined intellectual openness with conservative political and social ideas. He had attended the Lycée Rollin and then had a commercial training in London and Antwerp, continuing however to privately feed his humanistic and artistic interests. The painting Les gladiateurs is therefore part of the series of large canvases conceived for the Rosenberg house, documented in some photographs of the time.

Luca Signorelli, Dannati all’inferno, 1499-1502, fresco belonging to the cycle of the Storie degli ultimi giorni, Chapel of San Brizio (Cappella Nova), Cathedral of Orvieto.

Les gladiateurs is an extraordinary canvas from 1928 that re-proposes the same compositions of human and animal bodies made for Rosenberg in smaller dimensions but with more intense and surprising color effects. The dynamic and at the same time static “polychrome block” presents itself as a single plastic element, whose characteristic as an autonomous “monument” is underlined by the footrest shield and the rod leaning against the wall, an element which is detached but still an integral part of the composition as in certain conceptual works.

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The painting Les gladiateurs, which soon entered the collection of Léonce Rosenberg, was soon chosen for the artist’s first solo exhibition set up in the autumn of 1928 at Arthur Tooth & Sons, London. Later on it attracted the attention of Sydney Alfred Schiff, novelist, translator, patron, friend of painters and musicians, as well as art collector. Sir Edward Beddington-Behrens, member of the same family, was the following owner of the work. He was son of the President of the British Chamber of Commerce who served as Chairman of the British Committee of the European League for Economic Cooperation. Les gladiateurs appears here in Sydney Alfred Schiff’s house in London, in a photo published in L’arredamento moderno, Hoepli, Milan, 1936 by Roberto Aloi.