Giorgio de Chirico and Metaphysics
Only one voice rises against the tide at the beginning of the twentieth century, when artistic research is literally overwhelmed by the “hangover” represented by the avant-garde movements, a single man looks at the value of tradition and the rediscovery of the ancient profession of painter. This courageous voice and lonely is that of Giorgio De Chirico
SALES AND QUOTES OF WORKS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
Biography of Giorgio De Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was born on a hot summer night in 1888, in the Greek city of Valos, located in the region of Thessaly, where his father Evaristo, an engineer born in Constantinople but of Italian culture, is building a railway. His mother, Gemma, was born in Smyrna to a Genoese family. In the nineties the family moved to Athens, where his brother Andrea was born, the most important emotional bond in his life.
In Athens the young Giorgio de Chirico completed his classical studies, studied music and drawing with Maestro Jakobides, future director of the Archaeological Museum. Athens, it seems a paradox, is at the end of the 19th century, the capital of Neoclassicism rather than the cradle of authentic classicism. German culture and language dominate, the face of the city is designed by Bavarian architects, the De Chiricos are Schliemann’s neighbors.
In 1905 the death of his father inflicts a severe blow on the family, the two brothers decide to leave Athens to continue their studies in Munich, it is the beginning of a journey that will last for a lifetime. Giorgio de Chirico and Andrea sail from Patras to Venice but then decide to go down to Bari and visit Italy, of which they feel they are children without knowing it, before arriving in Germany
Once in Munich, Giorgio de Chirico attended the circle of Greek intellectuals led by the architect Pikionis, attended the composer Max Reger, met and rejected the Secession, became passionate about culture and romantic painting, choosing Bocklin and Klinger as his ideal masters. These artists attract him above all for the mythological themes, which evidently take him back to the places of his childhood, and for the mysterious and enigmatic dimension that their works evoke, an element that will characterize all of Giorgio de Chirico’s figurative production.
His first paintings feature fantastic beings from mythology, such as centaurs fighting each other or dying in solitude, like tritons and mermaids immersed in their marine world, themes that find a precise correspondence in the works of the two artists mentioned. It is clear from the outset, however, that in Giorgio de Chirico’s painting the myth does not have a reassuring and rationalizing function, as in neoclassical culture, but embodies a tragic and solitary vision of existence.
In 1909 he moved away from Munich to visit the Biennale from Venice, it was supposed to be a short stay instead Italy is calling again. He stays for a while in Milan then moves to Florence, which he chooses as his new homeland. Emblematic of this period is The Departure of the Argonauts, a painting from 1910 that condenses the feelings and foundations of his figurative culture. Like Giorgio de Chirico, the Argonauts abandon their land, their safe harbor, towards unknown destinations and experiences, they are nomads, orphans of a homeland.
Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), metaphysical artist who strongly influenced the surrealist movement – Source: Getty-Images
The ship moves away from a beach, where the white houses evoke the typical views of the Aegean coasts, a statue of Athena Partenos watches her go away, at her feet traces of blood indicate the sacrifice made for the goddess to protect the sailors, but the simulacrum seems so small and motionless in front of the forces that stir in nature, in the sea, calm only on the surface, and in the wind that sweeps the tops of the trees.
There is already everything Giorgio de Chirico, there is the evocation of higher forces, there is the recourse to the myth, to its sculpted representation, there is the journey with no return, there is the nostalgia of the lost and sought-after homeland , there is the poignant sense of nature, already present in Bocklin and in Leopardi’s poetry.
Giorgio de Chirico, from Enigmas to Metaphysics
Florence is also the place where the first enigmas arise, paintings with a suspended and mysterious atmosphere in which figures from shoulders wrapped in peplums, men or statues recur, in large and deserted urban spaces, spaces delimited by architecture in which curtains, closed or semi-closed, they let us assume and dream of other boundless and unknown spaces.
A perfect example is the Enigma painting of an autumn afternoon, from 1910, in which a warm afternoon light illuminates the medieval architecture of Piazza Santa Croce, transforming it into a fantastic vision. It is Giorgio de Chirico himself who explains the mental state from which the enigmas arise, a sort of revelation that brings out new things already seen and already known,
a moment of suspension from time that reveals the very essence of those things that escape most and that only a chosen spirit can grasp:
“The autumn sun, hot and strong, illuminated the statue and the facade of the church … I had the strange impression of looking at those things for the first time and the composition of the painting revealed itself to my mind’s eye, when I look at the painting I see that moment, nevertheless the moment is an enigma to me ”.
After this first step into the new dimension of the mystery, Giorgio de Chirico makes an important trip to Paris and the Salon welcomes some of his paintings in 1912. The surrounding climate seems to leave him completely indifferent, how different are his paintings “suspended and out of time ”with the frenetic futuristic speed! How different are his hybrid architectures, made up of squares and towers, arcades and chimneys from Cubist constructions and deconstructions! Yet everything happens at the same time, everything takes place around him …
If Giorgio de Chirico appears indifferent to the avant-garde movements, they are not at all indifferent to the young and melancholy Italian boy. His painting silences debates and controversies, silences artists, spectators and critics. It is the most important intellectual of the time, Apollinaire, who first noticed him, who coined for him the term “metaphysical” referring to an inner and cerebral art, whose sensations take an architectural form.
In Paris, other elements also make their first appearances that will later become recurrent in his painting: the glove, a lost object, separated from its double, which will take on gigantic dimensions and which will be placed side by side with classical statues; toys, nostalgic elements of a lost childhood; the mannequins, blind and silent inhabitants of the architecture and scenic spaces.
1915, the war breaks out and many, for different reasons, run to take up arms .. The young futurists because they believe in the illusion of being able to affect history, Giorgio De Chirico because in search of a national identity, of a flag under which they can finally place its existence.
The war and Ferrara
Once Giorgio de Chirico was enlisted, he was transferred to Ferrara at the 27th regiment, but he was not sent to the front but assigned to an office job. He can therefore continue to paint and in the Este city he makes new important friends, in fact he knows Filippo De Pisis, Ardengo Soffici and above all Carlo Carrà.
With the latter, Giorgio de Chirico has a real artistic partnership, especially since 1916, when both are hospitalized at the Villa del Seminario military hospital. During the hospitalization the two artists work together, influence each other and focus on their concept of Metaphysical painting which from a solitary intuition thus becomes an artistic movement, which will also attract Giorgio Morandi and other artists outside the Italian borders.
Some articles, which appeared in the local press, illustrate the artistic research carried out by the two painters and outline a completely different direction from that undertaken by Divisonism and Futurism that carried the banner of Italian art at the beginning of the century. Unfortunately, the partnership lasts only a couple of years because subsequently Carlo Carrà, with the support of some Italian critics, will try to appropriate the paternity of metaphysical language, trying to oust De Chirico from it.
Giorgio de Chirico’s most well-known metaphysical masterpieces belong to the Ferrara period, such as The Disquieting Muses and Ettore and Andromaca. In the latter the figures of the two lovers are represented by armless mannequins, which approach but cannot hug each other, they are two automata devoid of inner life, their bodies are machines with a complex structure, but this is not an exaltation of the technology, on the contrary, they are immobile figures who deny the value of progress.
What is Metaphysics in painting
Hector and Andromache by Giorgio de Chirico – Source: Ansa
The official birth of the movement dates back to the 1916 meeting between Giorgio De Chirico and Carlo Carrà in the military hospital of Ferrara even though the term “metaphysics” had already been used by Apollinaire to describe De Chirico’s painting in previous years.
For the two artists, “Metaphysics” indicates a precise reference to the philosophy of Aristotle and to that part of ancient Greek thought that describes a reality that transcends that which can be immediately known to the senses. The description of this reality takes place through the representation of real objects but associated with each other in a way detached from environmental logic, unexpected, illogical, such as to generate in the viewer a sense of surprise and disquiet called “estrangement”.
The aesthetic principles of Metaphysics have never been formulated in a manifesto, but they can be summarized as follows:
– descrition of a reality that goes beyond sensible appearances;
– images that give a sense of mystery, hallucination or dream;
– perspective construction of the painting according to multiple inconsistent vanishing points;
– very static images to indicate that the scene takes place outside of time;
– absence of the human figure except in the form of a mannequin, statue, shadow;
– flat and uniform backgrounds of color, in opposition to the emotional strength of the Expressionists and the dynamism of the Futurists;
– references to ancient Greek mythology.
The disturbing Muses by Giorgio de Chirico: description and meaning
The disturbing muses of Giorgio de Chirico – Source: Ansa
The work shows a square, in the background appears the Estense Castle of Ferrara and a factory with two chimneys. On the right, a building with arches evokes classical architecture. In the succession of perspective inconsistencies, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and recent times mix with each other, in the same way that references to the history of art and common life are always combined in the works of Giorgio de Chirico.
However, nothing shines through the real vitality of the city, everything is empty, suspended, blocked. Ferrara is here only the symbol, the memory of the city that had a court and a power. The image is built to give a feeling of unreality, of a mental, unnatural space, like that of a stage.
In the foreground there are no people but statues, the one in an upright position, however, has a mannequin head, and the seated one seems to be crossed by seams as if it were a rag puppet instead of a piece of marble. Therefore serious elements are mixed with facetious ones, courtly with everyday ones.
The result is a sense of disorientation and disorientation in which the vestiges of the ancient world are not reassuring presences, but elements of decay and signs of a civilization that has reached the sunset, as the long shadows and the twilight light show us. The painting, executed in 1918, is now in a private collection.
De Chirico, the Plastic Values and the return to tradition
Love song by Giorgio de Chirico – Source: Ansa
The dramatic experience of the war puts an end (at least for a while) to the amazing futurist vision and directs Italian culture towards a recovery of tradition, a new reflection on the great Italian pictorial school of the great masters of the Tuscan school. The old Tuscan masters became a source of inspiration above all for the way of constructing the human figure: solid, massive, heavy bodies that occupy space in a safe way, which rely, like the landscape and architecture, on simple and evident geometric rules.
This new course, also known as Return to Order, is promoted and supported by the magazine Valori Plastici and the movement of the same name that arises from it. In this context Giorgio de Chirico’s painting moves in the following years, a return to the skilful and patient craft of the Renaissance painter, who masters drawing and chiaroscuro, who knows how to portray faces, architecture and landscape.
He will continue to travel, to work between Florence, Rome and Milan. He will exhibit in Europe and the United States. He will die in Rome in 1978, after having completed his 90th birthday.