oil on canvas, 45×44 cm
signed and dated top left
- Accounts 1919
The Still Life: Pear, Pine, and Eggs transfers the lyricism of Words in Freedom and the vigor of Futurist typography to the objects, carefully placing them in curious isolation, thanks to the deep shadow that surrounds them. Painted in the summer of 1919 in Antignano, when Conti was working with Pavolini on the magazine "II Centone" and on the drafting of the Manifesto of Analogic Painting, which remained unpublished, it sparked influential discussions between the two friends, seeking new expressive formulas. It is particularly representative of the moment in which Conti's Futurism was deliberately grafted onto that metaphysical tone he had always glimpsed. Delving into the expressionist roots of De Chirico's metaphysics with a "plebeian" influence drawn from Campana's poetry, this moment served above all to reawaken Conti's pictorial instinct and bring him back to the great lesson of the seventeenth century, which Roberto Longhi was reviving in these years.
