De Chirico

by Magdalena Holzhey

Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico (1888-1978) was hugely influential in the early years of the Surrealist movement. His paintings during the teens in Paris, where he moved in 1911, caused such a stir that such important figures as Picasso and Paul Eluard immediately praised them. This phase of his work, which he later termed pittura metafisica (metaphysical painting) was marked by dramatic compositions involving sharp perspective, striking shadows, geometrical planes, voids of space, and a general feeling of anxiety and loneliness; the sense of absurdity evoked by the mannequin-like figures in almost nightmarish landscapes seemed to suggest a Freudian expression of the unconscious. After 1930, De Chirico turned to a more classical style of painting and continued in the same vein for the rest of his career; his later work was widely criticized, especially by the Surrealists who had so admired his early paintings.

Genres: Art, Art History

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Magdalena Holzhey is an art historian and curator at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld in Germany.

Holzhey studied art history, Italian, and musicology in Berlin and Pisa. She held various academic and curatorial positions in galleries and museums, including the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, before becoming Curator of Collections of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. She has published widely on classical modernism and contemporary art.

Reviews

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ‘metaphysical paintings’ only cover the years 1910-1914 — by 1914 , he was moving into less moody, more conceptual spheres. The text is interesting and adequate, though not inspired.

[Allyson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to the work of de Chirico, who happens to be a great favourite of mine. A precursor to the Surrealists it is his disconcerting use of perspective, shadow and sense of space, time and place that makes his paintings so interesting and atmospherically disturbing. For me he rivals the cubist work of Picasso and Braques.

[Filip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars primarily for De Chirico's work, rather than the book. The book is fine but does not - and perhaps cannot - measure up to the art it is describing. Maybe those are just inevitable limits of what language can do. It would seem that writing about art is not dissimilar to "dancing about architecture". Alas, here I am, writing a review, about a book, about art.

Speaking of art and architecture... To my mind and eye, there's really nothing comparable to De Chirico's piazzas and his whole metaphysical period between 1909 and 1918. I find this work to have a strikingly transfixing effect. No matter how many museum-dwellers may be milling around, his paintings always erase the external world and transport me into these landscapes of eerie solitude and uncanny in-betweenness. Clocks and light suggest hot Mediterranean middays, but the long shadows suggest sunsets; statues indicate antiquity, and trains modernity; straightforward localities suggest reality, but are then populated by dreamlike objects and characters, rendered in out-of-kilter perspectives. And the viewer is usually almost alone: there's a mannequin, a statue, or a fleeting silhouette to keep you in odd company.

There's something poignantly admirable in De Chirico finding such an affecting and unique style in his 20s, and then radically breaking with it within a decade despite the success, and continuing to reinvent himself against his prior work for the rest of his life. Although I don't find his later work to resonate with me as much as his metaphysical paintings, I can't help but be impressed by this quixotic ethos and quest.

As a form of apology to the reader that has put up with me writing about what should arguably better be "passed over in silence" and be experienced in person, I'm linking to Plath's poem inspired by De Chirico's "Disquieting Muses". From her short preamble to the reading of the poem, I suppose she too felt the friction that one experiences at the edge of language and art:

A poem can’t take the place of a plum, or an apple. But just as a painting can recreate, by illusion, the dimension it loses by being confined to canvas, so a poem, by its own system of illusions, can set up a rich and apparently living world within its particular limits.

[Laurens Bynens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about the life and works (and its many evolutions) of Giorgio De Chirico. The author fluently connects De Chirico's artistic vision, its pictoral expressions and his personal life story. Accessible and concise. The images of the paintings are a joy to watch. Some more descriptions and explanations to accompany the images (which can be found in the general text, to be clear) would have been a small plus.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could be better and include more facts

[Patrícia Rodrigues · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Existem muitos mais enigmas na sombra de um homem que caminha ao sol do que em todas as religiões do passado, presente e futuro."
Giorgio de Chirico