Sale 2532 - 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, March 5, 2020

523 c DOMENICO GNOLI Old Man and Serpent . Watercolor and ink on ivory laid paper, 1962. 115x555 mm; 4 1 / 2 x21 7 / 8 inches. Signed, dated and dedicated in pencil, lower right recto, and annotated in ink, lower left recto. Ex-collection the artist Ben Shahn and his wife, Bernarda Shahn, New York. The present drawing recounts a “difficult day” in 1962. Though it remains unclear what Gnoli was referring to, the human-headed serpent, historically representing the Biblical fall of man, warns an elderly gentleman to beware of himself. The Shahn’s collected Gnoli’s work and counted him among their friends. In a 1983 interview with the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Bernarda Shahn described Gnoli as a “marvelous surrealist painter.” [5,000/8,000] 524  GIORGIO DE CHIRICO I Dioscuri . Color lithograph, 1969. 412x515 mm; 16 1 / 4 x20 1 / 4 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 48/90 in pencil, lower margin. With the artist’s blind stamp, lower left. Printed by Alberto Caprini, Rome, with the blind stamp lower right. A very good impression with strong colors. Brandani 52. [1,500/2,500] 523 524