For Savinio [...] the voyage is the means of reaching the uncharted lands of the imagination, located outside time and set in a prelapsarian Eden, understood to be the infancy of the world.  

Fin d’un voyage (End of a Voyage) is one of four paintings that Alberto Savinio presented in Paris in April 1929 at the Galerie Zak, in Place St-Germaindes- Prés, during the exhibition Un groupe d’Italiens de Paris. This unusual seascape, with the small triangular sail puffed out with wind in the centre, featured alongside Epistle to the Ethiopians, College Students and Sodom.¹ All the works were connected by the iconographical recurrence of fantastic objects, piles or sequences of toys and colourful polyhedrons. 

Less than two years after his exhibition debut, which came in October 1927 with his solo show at the Galerie Jacques Bernheim introduced by Jean Cocteau, the artist’s work already seems to have been properly recognised, both among galleries and collectors and within the intellectual circles in the capital, particularly the Surrealist circle. The group sanctioned Alberto Savinio and Giorgio de Chirico’s inclusion among the Italiens de Paris. They exhibited in the Galerie Zak alongside Mario Tozzi, leader of the group, Massimo Campigli, Filippo de Pisis, Renato Parescen, Gino Severini and Alberto Giacometti, although he was Swiss not Italian. As well as drawing them into the group - following their initial exclusion due to their interviews published in Comoedia in late 1927, which shared an explicit anti-Italian sentiment² - the exhibition gave them access to additional contacts and positions, leading to the start of the collaboration with Georges Ribemont- Dessaignes, author of the text in the catalogue, a former Dadaist and dissident Surrealist, and editor-in-chief of Bifur magazine. Alberto Savinio soon went on to publish an article in the magazine called the “Introduction à une vie de Mercure”,³ the literary project dedicated to his tutelary deity that was left unfinished, while Giorgio de Chirico published his novel Hebdomeros in the “Collection Bifur” printed by the Edition du Carrefour.⁴ Fin d’un voyage seems to echo the title of Le voyage sans fin (The Endless Voyage), a metaphysical painting by de Chirico dated 1914.⁵ The theme of the voyage is one of the recurrent motifs of the epos created by the two brothers, who identified themselves in the inseparable couples of the Dioscuri, protectors of sailors and storms, and the Argonauts, who set off in search of the golden fleece. For Savinio - a “grand explorateur” and “grand necromancer”, as Waldemar George described him in the review of the exhibition at the Galerie Zak⁶ - the voyage is the means of reaching the uncharted lands of the imagination, located outside time and set in a prelapsarian Eden, understood to be the infancy of the world. 

Beneath the semblance of the idyllic scene, with the blue sky and the mirrorlike sea, the expedition shown in the painting has a suspended meaning, which is also emphasised visually by the variety of paint applications. The approach to dry land seems to be contradicted by the unfurled sail of the small vessel, rendered in black and white in a sort of photographic insert that contrasts with the bright colours of the image overall. As already seen in the “trophy” vessel of Le navire perdu (The Lost Ship) (fig. 1),⁷ the boat is completely incorporated within the land, grafted upon a fragment of nature, a surprising strip of formless textured painting, worked in layers and imprints until achieving an earthy crust with iridescent and metallic reflections. The boat-rock, highlighted against the background of a white island, as misty as a cloud, moves with its lively metaphorical load of toys, wooden constructions with rounded edges, rendered soft by the mellow palette. Introduced by Object in the Forest of 1927-28,⁸ the theme features in the middle of a cycle divided into numerous variants, in which the toys, piled up on the ground or released into the air, act as ironic and imaginative storytelling machines. 

Exhibited at the Galleria Gissi in Turin in 1973, Fin d’un voyage later featured in the exhibition Savinio. Gli anni di Parigi in Verona in 1990. Purchased by Francesco Federico Cerruti by 1993, as documented by the handwritten inventory of Villa Cerruti, dated 30 June of that year, this work, together with Le sommeil de l’Hermaphrodite (The Sleep of the Hermaphrodite; cat. p. 802) and Voilà mon rêve (Here Is My Dream; cat. p. 804), forms a cohesive nucleus within the collection, a trilogy that represents the moment that marked the start of the artist’s career. 

Giorgina Bertolino 

¹ Vivarelli 1996, in the following order pp. 66-67, nos. 1929 8 and 1929 10, ill., p. 70, no. 1929 18, ill. 

² Published fifteen days apart, in November and December 1927, the two interviews revealed the de Chirico brothers’ criticism of Italian art and the art scene in Italy. Savinio saw Paris as “the only possible city in the world, the only city where one can produce, the only city where one feels encouraged, the only city where intelligence and a sense of art reign alongside one another” (Lagarde 1927a). According to de Chirico: “There are no modern art movements in Italy. No dealers or galleries. Modern Italian painting does not exist” (Lagarde 1927b). 

³ Savinio 1929 now in Savinio 1995, pp. 439-460. 

⁴ De Chirico 1929. 

⁵ Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. 

⁶ George 1929. 

⁷ Vivarelli 1996, 1928 26, p. 57, ill. The quote is taken from the entry about the work. 

⁸ Vivarelli 1996, 1927-28 3, p. 44, ill.