In the autumn of 2010, the Scientific Council decided to direct a large part of the Archive’s research towards the systematic exploration of what is perhaps the least known period of Giorgio de Chirico’s career and art: the 1930s. This project was given the name “progetto Dudron” [“Project Dudron”], or rather “De Chirico all’epoca di Monsieur Dudron”, as the autobiographical figure of the protagonist of this so-called “novel” – which the artist began around 1934 and never finished – embodies some of the predominantly contradictory characteristics that defined De Chirico at a crucial moment in his poetic, intellectual and human trajectory.
Initially, this overarching aim of this research project envisaged the production of an annotated critical text dedicated to the complex narrative associated with Dudron’s name, which would to be made available to scholars on our website, and, at a later stage, the printed publication of a series of monographic dossiers dedicated to the analysis of homogenous groups of documents or individual paintings that shed some light on the events of the period while contributing significantly to the production of the Catalogue Raisonné. The project has come to partial fruition with this critical edition of “Monsieur Dudron” (published online at the end of 2012) and with the two monographic dossiers by Flavia Matitti and Gerd Roos, also published in 2012, dedicated to the exploration of de Chirico’s artistic activity and business dealings between 1937 and 1939 (see Pubblications).
The criteria that guided the development of this critical edition and useful details for its consultation are found in the individual fields into which the research is divided: History and chronology of the text; Synoptic texts; Appendices. The “Monsieur Dudron” project, conceived by The Archive of Metaphysical Art, under the direction of Gerd Roos, was developed by Gerd Roos and Martin Weidlich, in collaboration with Emiliana Biondi and Nicol Mocchi, with the technical assistance of Lalla Pellegrino and Max Dolcini of Studio 23esimo. The Italian editing, translations and final revision were carried out by Paolo Baldacci.
