Giorgio de Chirico

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Giorgio de Chirico (July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978) often known as Népo, was an influential pre-Surrealist Greek-Italian painter born in Volos, Greece to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement.

Life and work

After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he read the writings of the philosophers Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer, and studied the works of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger.

He returned to Italy in the summer of 1909 and spent six months in Milan. At the beginning of 1910 he moved to Florence where he painted the first of his 'Metaphysical Town Square' series: The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon after the revelation he felt in Piazza Santa Croce. He also painted The Enigma of the Oracle while in Florence. In July 1911 he spent a few days in Turin on his way to Paris. De Chirico was profoundly moved by what he called the 'metaphysical aspect' of Turin: the architecture of its archways and piazzas. It was the city of Nietzsche. De Chirico lived in Paris from July 1911 until May 1915 when he returned to Italy to enlist in the Italian army during World War I.

De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were still cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like hybrid figures. Later in his life De Chirico abandoned the metaphysical style and started painting more realistically. His later paintings never received the same critical praise as did those from his metaphysical period.

De Chirico also published a novel in 1925: Hebdomeros, the Metaphysician. His brother, Andrea de Chirico, who became famous as Alberto Savinio, was also a writer and a painter.

Legacy

De Chirico won praise for his work almost immediately from writer Guillaume Apollinaire, who helped to introduce his work to the later Surrealists.

Yves Tanguy wrote how one day in 1922 he saw one of De Chirico's paintings in an art dealer's window, and was so impressed by it he resolved on the spot to become an artist — although he had never even held a brush.

Other artists who acknowledged De Chirico's influence include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Philip Guston. De Chirico strongly influenced the Surrealist movement.

Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian film director, also claimed to be influenced by De Chirico. Some comparison can be made to the long takes in Antonioni's films from the 1960s, in which the camera continues to linger on desolate cityscapes populated by a few distant figures, or none at all, in the absence of the film's protagonists.

John Ashbery has called Hebdomeros "probably...the finest [major work of Surrealist fiction]." ^[1]

Modern photographer Duane Michals was also influenced by De Chirico.

Trivia

The 1914 painting Melancholy and Mystery of a Street was used as the cover for the first UK paperback edition of Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife, part of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

De Chirico's 1915 painting The Seer (or The Prophet) is featured on the cover of jazz pianist Thelonious Monk's 1958 album Misterioso.

The Playstation 2 critically acclaimed videogame Ico was also strongly influenced by de Chirico, as well as its successor Shadow of the Colossus. The game was made as a surrealist's painting. It evoked feelings of infinity and nostalgia awaken in the small, shadowy creatures compared to the immortal beings, often cold and silent, like enormous giants or buildings. A significant part of the game was experiencing the game world, in a journey through a live, breathing painting. Much like J. R. R. Tolkien's books, the journey was a homage to nature and in the same time, it created silence and sound in the spectator in the same way that a surrealist's painting would.

Selected works

• Flight of the Centauri, Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon and Enigma of the Oracle (1909)
• Ritratto di Andrea de Chirico (Alias Alberto Savinio) (1909-1910)
• Enigma of the Hour and The Nostalgia of the Infinite (1911)
• Melanconia, The Enigma of the Arrival and La Matinèe Angoissante (1912)
• The Red Tower, Ariadne, The Awakening of Ariadne, The Uncertainty of the Poet, La Statua Silenziosa, The Anxious Journey, Melancholy of a Beautiful Day, Le Rêve Transformé and Melancholy and Mystery of a Street (1913)
• The Anguish of Departure (began in 1913), Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire, The Nostalgia of the Poet, L'Énigme de la fatalité, Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure), Love Song, The Enigma of a Day, The Philosopher’s Conquest, The Child’s Brain, The Philosopher and the Poet and Piazza d’Italia (Autumn Melancholy) (1914)
• The Evil Genius of a King (began in 1914), The Seer (or The Prophet), Piazza d’Italia, The Double Dream of Spring, The Purity of a Dream, Two Sisters (The Jewish Angel) and The Duo (1915)
• Andromache, The Melancholy of Departure, The Disquieting Muses, Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits (1916)
• Metaphysical Interior with Large Factory and The Faithful Servitor (both began in 1916), The Great Metaphysician, Ettore e Andromaca, Metaphysical Interior and Great Metaphysical Interior (1917)
• Metaphysical Muses and Hermetic Melancholy (1918)
• Still Life with Salami and The Sacred Fish (1919)
• Self-portrait (1920)
• Italian Piazza, Maschere and Departure of the Argonauts (1921)
• The Prodigal Son (1922)
• Florentine Still Life (c. 1923)
• The House with the Green Shutters (1924)
• Au Bord de la Mer, Le Grand Automate, The Terrible Games, Mannequins on the Seashore and The Painter (1925)
• La Commedia e la Tragedia (Commedia Romana), The Painter’s Family and Cupboards in a Valley (1926)
• L’Esprit de Domination, The Eventuality of Destiny (Monumental Figures), Mobili nella valle and The Archaeologists (1927)
• Temple et Foret dans la Chambre (1928)
• Gladiatori (began in 1927), The Archaeologists IV (from the series Metamorphosis), The return of the Prodigal son I (from the series Metamorphosis) and Bagnante (Ritratto di Raissa) (1929)
• Illustrations from the book Calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire (1930)
• I Gladiatori (Combattimento) (1931)
• Cavalos a Beira-Mar (1932-1933)
• Cavalli in Riva al Mare (1934)
• La Vasca di Bagni Misteriosi (1936)
• Self-portrait (1935-1937)
• Archeologi (1940)
• Illustrations from the book L’Apocalisse (1941)
• Villa Medici - Temple and Statue (1945)
• Minerva (1947)
• Metaphysical Interior with Workshop (1948)
• Fiat (1950)
• Piazza d’Italia (1952)
• The Fall - Via Crucis (1947-54)
• Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio (1955)
• Salambò su un cavallo impennato (1956)
• Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits (1958)
• Piazza d’Italia (1962)
• Cornipedes, (1963)
• Manichino (1964)
• Ettore e Andromaca (1966)
• The Return of Ulysses and Mysterious Baths - Flight Toward the Sea (1968)
• Il rimorso di Oreste and Solitudine della Gente di Circo (1969)
• Orfeo Trovatore Stanco and Muse with Broken Column (1970)
• Metaphysical Interior with Setting Sun (1971)
• Sole sul cavalletto (1972)
• Mobili e rocce in una stanza, La Mattina ai Bagni misteriosi and La mattina ai bagni misteriosi (1973)
• Pianto d’amore - Ettore e Andromaca and The Sailors’ Barracks (1974)

External links

• Giorgio de Chirico
• Giorgio de Chirico in Volos
• Giorgio de Chirico ART CENTRE
• Ten Dreams Galleries