Canvas is unlined. Surface retains rich, textured impasto. Under UV light some pigments fluoresce but appear to be original. Excellent condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Franco Basile has commented that Campigli's works are "imbibed with the light breeze of things past, the sense of expectation is accompanied by the brush strokes of silence, a hidden diary of a world veiled in the gauzes of anxiety, but also illuminated by a private sky and by the lyricism of a timeless haze" (Franco Basile, Campigli, Bologna, 1992, p.33). Indeed Basile's observation goes a long way to explaining the mood of the present work.  It depicts a woman looking at herself in the mirror, whose reflections recede back to create Campigli's characteristic architectonic structures. While living in Paris in the 1920s, the artist was influenced by the rappel à l'ordre, which saw a reinterpretation of classicism in the wake of the chaos of World War I. This desire for a return to order was also felt by Picasso and De Chirico, 💃which accounts for their comparable aesthetic, created by the primitive, monumental women occupying spaces in which time appears to be suspended.

 

The surface of the canvas is very heavily worked and Basile remarks that the artist "spent hours and hours sharpening, scratching out, restyling, repainting and destroying his work" (ibid., p.33). This working process was something like that of Alberto Giacometti: long and arduous that is, and full of self-discovery. He certainly shꩵares with Giacometti a profound desire for the absolute, an elusive goal which preoccupied many o🗹f the great artists of the twentieth century. The frieze-like aesthetic of the work is evidence of Campigli's fascination with the art of the Etruscans and Egyptians, to name just two of his many sources of inspiration.

 

One particularly striking aspect of Campigli's oeuvre is the distinct lack of men: he painted only women and as he admitted himself: "my imagination has always dominated reality and I transform the latter to make it more readily acceptable to me... in a crowd I only see the beautiful faces, only the women, of course, as in my paintings" (Massimo Campigli, quoted in ibid., p.42). Woman in Mirror shows a woman and her many reflections, perhaps a representation of the multi-faceted complexity of the women that filled his life, a complexity that at once intrigued and terrified him. He has written of the attraction he feels for neurotic women, and the way that he aims to give the women he paints "a vague, complex expression, one that hypnotises" (ibid., p.48).