Water Jugs (Primary Title)
Massimo Campigli, Italian, 1895 - 1971 (Artist)
Campigli came to Paris in 1919 to work as a correspondent for an Italian newspaper and, while there, took up painting. By the late 1920s, he was interested in the idea of a modern reassessment of the antique past; a 1928 visit to the National Etruscan Museum in Rome was his transformative moment.
This painting presents contrasting female archetypes. The foreground figure evokes a sense of timeless femininity with her archaizing motifs such as hollowed-out eyes reminiscent of antique sculpture. Her ruddy tones and the heavily worked canvas recall Etruscan wall paintings. The figure in the background is a contemporary woman—her umbrella a nod to fashionable urban life. .
Selections from the T. Catesby Jones Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, November 15 - December 29, 1974
Arte Italiana del XX Secolo da Collexione Americane, Palazzo Reale, Milan, April 30 - July 26, 1960; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Summer 1960
Mary Washington College, May 1953
University of Virginia, January 1953
Hollins College, December 1952
Summer Exhibition: Painting and Sculpture from the Museum Collection and on Loan, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, June 23 - November 4, 1937
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