The formation of the work of Giorgio de Chirico, biography and paintings. Melancholy and metaphysical painting

IN Tretyakov Gallery Another grand exhibition opened - a retrospective of Giorgio de Chirico, the pioneer of metaphysical painting and the forerunner of surrealism. Before you walk through the exhibition " Metaphysical insights“, we decided to collect all the most interesting things about de Chirico’s work and look at his work through the eyes of experts.

Metaphysics de Chirico

“The metaphysics of Giorgio de Chirico was born in Florence in 1910, when he painted the painting “The Riddle of an Autumn Afternoon,” in which he reworked the image of the Dante monument in Piazza Santa Croce in a mysterious way. The painting became the first step in a pictorial search that occupied a central place in Italian art of the first half of the last century. De Chirico turned to metaphysics because he felt the need to return to painting the “plot” that it had completely lost during the Fauvist and Cubist revolution - a revolution that focused on form and opened the way abstract art. De Chirico makes a genuine revolution: he contrasts the openly stated narrative plot, which painting is intended to illustrate, with an elusive, mysterious plot. The plot becomes a mystery.” Maurizio Calvesi, art historian.

Archeology de Chirico

“In de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, an architecture that is magical in its atmosphere appears, similar to that which can be seen in the paintings of the Italian Quattrocento. De Chirico, who grew up in Greece, developed a “sense of archeology” from childhood, which helped him see the multi-layered nature of our consciousness, the fragments that fill it - these fragments remain unnoticed for a long time, and then suddenly, for some unknown reason, float to the surface. This partly lost world appears in half-empty spaces, bounded by loggias and arches, in long shadows that fall at midday, in silence. The same figures appear in the “Piazza d’Italia,” for example, the sad Ariadne from the Vatican Museums, mannequins, and drawing tools. In 1917, repeated elements would allow de Chirico to develop a theory based on the idea of ​​eternal recurrence: it is most clearly expressed by the impossible embrace, which refers to the story of Hector and Andromache (1917).

De Chirico and the past

“Since 1968, de Chirico has studied formal elements from other artists, reviving them and combining them in his work. Behind this was an openly analytical approach. De Chirico used numerous elements artistic tradition, which goes from the “primitives” to the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque, ending with the great landscape painters who worked at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of this journey into the past, he could not help but reconsider his own work as a painter, which he began over half a century ago, creating the famous metaphysics.” Gianni Mercurio, art historian.

De Chirico and Sergei Diaghilev

“In 1929, the artist accepted Diaghilev’s offer to become the set designer for the ballet “The Ball” and went to Monte Carlo, where the production was planned. In his memoirs, he wrote: “Diaghilev, a balletomane, invited the most notable artists to paint scenery and costumes. I was also invited for a ballet called Le Bal to the music of the composer Rietti; this ballet was given in Monte Carlo in the spring of 1929 and in the summer it was given in Paris at the Sarah Bernhardt Theater. Was big success; towards the end, the applauding audience began shouting: “Sciricò! Sciricò! I was forced to go on stage to bow along with Rietti and the main dancers.” Diaghilev was not the only Russian entrepreneur who turned to de Chirico: in the 1930s he became director of the production department of the Milan Opera Nikolai Benois, who invited de Chirico, among other famous Italian artists, to design performances.”

De Chirico and Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich was the first to show interest in de Chirico and respond to his art. In the late 1920s, he was immersed in post-Suprematist experiments, integrating the artistic and philosophical principles of Suprematism into figurative creativity. Malevich was interested in similar searches in this area, and de Chirico turned out to be one of such masters - although his figurativeness did not evolve from the avant-garde movements of the 1900s, it took into account their achievements. Of the entire arsenal of de Chirico’s art (in the 1920s he turned to neoclassicism, causing the indignation of the surrealists), at that time the most consonant with Malevich’s aspirations was metaphysical painting, solving plastic and figurative problems of objectivity within the framework and in the spirit of the modern understanding of the tasks of art. Tatyana Goryacheva, curator of the Giorgio de Chirico exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery.

How are de Chirico and Cindy Sherman similar?

“In the late 1980s, Cindy Sherman was working on Historical Portraits. In these color photographs, using prosthetics, masks and makeup (all of which are emphasized rather than hidden), Sherman recreates a long series of portraits and paintings from the past - some of which actually exist (for example, the artist draws on the work of Caravaggio, Fouquet, etc.), others are fictitious. Sherman photographs herself, creating staged compositions, acting like a director, carefully structuring the scene - everything is believable and fake at the same time. From the very beginning, the theme of dressing up was important to the artist. This clearly echoes the way de Chirico not only recycled elements borrowed from portraits of the past, but also how he emphasized the borrowing by actually trying on period costumes. Gianni Mercurio, art historian.

Based on the publication “De Chirico. Nostalgia for infinity." State Tretyakov Gallery.

De Chirico Giorgio De Chirico Giorgio

(De Chirico) (1888-1978), Italian painter. The head of the “metaphysical school” in painting. In urban landscapes he conveyed a feeling of the alarming frozenness of the world, its alienation from man (“Disturbing Muses”, 1917).

DE CHIRICO (De Chirico) Giorgio (July 10, 1888, Volos, Greece - November 19, 1978, Rome), Italian painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer. Head of the "metaphysical school" (cm. METAPHYSICAL PAINTING)"in painting.
First Italian period(1910 - July 1911)
He was born in the city of Volos, located in the Greek province of Thessaly, where his father, an engineer by profession, was sent from Italy to build the first railways. Giorgio and him younger brother Andrea (later to become famous writer and a musician known under the pseudonym Andre Savigno) grew up in the atmosphere of an intelligent Italian family belonging to an ancient family. De Chirico graduated from the Greek Lyceum in Volos and then Polytechnical Institute in Athens, took lessons in Volos from the local painter Mavrodis. In 1905, with his mother and brother, after the death of his father, he moved to Germany, choosing further education Munich. De Chirico called this city "New Athens". Classes at the Academy of Arts and acquaintance with museum collections enriched the artist. His attention was especially drawn to the works of German symbolists - Arnold Böcklin (cm. BECKLIN Arnold) and Max Klinger (cm. Klinger Max). Under the influence of their “timeless” mythology and memories of Greece, the canvas “The Battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths” (1909, private collection) was painted. Having received good liberal arts education, De Chirico knew Greek philosophy and literature, was interested in German philosophy, translated Schopenhauer and Nietzsche into Italian; for him they were the ones who first explained “the nature of creative genius.” In an atmosphere of passion for German culture of the 19th century. and De Chirico’s “metaphysics” was born.
The category l "enigma ("mystery"), underlying the artist's metaphysical painting, meant (as De Chirico himself wrote in the book "Memories of My Life", 1945) a personal memory, "an unexpected and exciting clarification of details that excite the imagination, which are stored in sensations, nostalgia for childhood." In the articles "Metaphysical Aesthetics" (1918), "Metaphysical Painting" (1919), the philosophical essay "The Mechanism of Thinking" he explained the program of metaphysical painting, the creative process of the "metaphysicist" - the creator of the "new psychology of things" In his self-portrait (1911, New York, Museum contemporary art), compositionally reminiscent of A. Beklin’s self-portrait, the young artist made the inscription “What would I love if not for a riddle?” These words became programmatic for his subsequent work. Brought up in an Italian and German atmosphere cultural traditions beginning of the 20th century, sharing the ideas of B. Croce about the rapprochement of philosophy and art, about intuition as a means of comprehending the essence of art, he always valued the aesthetic program in creativity modern masters, separated such art from “technical techniques,” which, for example, he considered impressionism or pointillism.
In 1910, De Chirico moved with his mother and brother to Florence, where the first metaphysical paintings were painted: “The Riddle of the Oracle” (1910, private collection), “The Riddle of an Autumn Afternoon” (1910, New York, Museum of Modern Art). Florence became De Chirico's first “metaphysical” city; its squares and monuments formed the basis of these works. Turin, which De Chirico visited in July 1911, on his way to France, became an equally poetic “memory city” in his paintings. He called it the “Square City,” which fascinated him with medieval castles and palaces, regular squares, and memories of F. Nietzsche, who wrote “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” here in 1888.
Parisian period (July 1911-15)
With his mother and brother in July 1911, De Chirico arrived in Paris. Here the de Chirico brothers gained fame and here for the first time the talent of each was fully revealed. In the atelier on the banks of the Seine the most significant works“metaphysical” period “Gare Montparnasse” (1914, New York, Museum of Modern Art), “Song of Love” (1914, private collection), “Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire” (1914, Paris, Museum of Modern Art), “Mystery and Melancholy streets" (1914, New York, Museum of Modern Art), "The Conquest of the Philosopher" (1914, Chicago, Art Institute). Guillaume Apollinaire (cm. APOLLINER (Guillaume) One of the first to appreciate the talent of De Chirico, who managed to avoid the influence of the bright masters who worked in Paris during these years, organized his first exhibition in the workshop on the street. Notre Dame de Champs in October 1913. A. Breton (cm. BRETON Andre) introduced De Chirico to P. Guillaume, whose collection included paintings by Matisse, Picasso, and Modigliani.
The interest of both De Chirico brothers in the art of theater was born in Paris. Apollinaire wrote about the music of Andre Savigno, his pantomime ballet “The Death of Niobe”, performed by the Russian Ballets, in the spirit of futuristic experiments. As certain symbols of Florence, Milan, Turin, as stone visions of the past, architectural and sculptural monuments appear in the paintings of the Parisian period: “Song of Love” (1913, private collection) and “Nostalgia for Infinity” (1913, New York, Museum of Modern Art) . These are symbols of a journey of memory into the world eternal values, the world of tradition, which the artist himself called “archaeological windows.” The graceful figure of a girl rolling a hoop in the canvas “Nostalgia for Infinity” sounds like a contrast to the “eternal” - a deserted city street in its museum, Renaissance frame. In the canvas “Song of Love”, the intense expression of juxtaposed objects - a cast of the statue of the God of love Apollo and a red rubber glove, a green ball, the corner of a palazzo arcade, a locomotive moving behind a brick wall - gives rise to a special metaphysical harmony of things - signs, bearers of a certain history and tradition of the past and new time.
Second Italian period: Ferrara (1915-1919) Rome (1919-1924)
In the summer of 1915, De Chirico moved to Ferrara in connection with Italy's entry into the First World War in May of the same year. world war. The brothers were called to the front. De Chirico called the city “the most metaphysical”, “the city of dreams”, since his collaboration with C. Carra, G. Morandi, F. De Pisis, who became his like-minded people in the embodiment of the ideas of metaphysical painting, was born here. Heroes of paintings of 1915-18. (“Troubadour”. 1917, private collection; “Hector and Andromache”, ca. 1918, private collection) some phantom mannequins without facial features become. "Quotes" from different eras correlated in the works of the Ferrara period (“Great Metaphysical Interior”. 1917, private collection; from the series “Metaphysical Interiors”, 1916-1919) with modernity, acquiring a nostalgic tone, a shade of travesty, since the world is seen by “metaphysicians” as “an endless museum of oddities " The mysterious multivariate associations are also generated by the objects in the series “Evangelical Still Lifes” (1916-19), the sacred symbolism of which is associated with the Christian understanding of virtue and morality. The works of the Ferrara period bear the imprint of a heightened worldview than the more poetic works written in Paris.
The first joint exhibition of the “metaphysicians” took place in May 1918 at the “Epoch” Gallery in Rome, where De Chirico soon moved from Ferrara, here at the magazine “Plastic Values” in the early 1920s. they formed a group of painters and critics, which, in addition to the De Chirico brothers, included C. Carra, A. Soffici, M. Broglio and others. In February 1919 in the gallery famous photographer A. J. Bragagli held the first personal exhibition artist in Italy. The Roman period coincided with the years of the “Black Twenty” - the time of the consolidation of fascism in post-war Italy. During this tragic era for Italy, De Chirico remained committed to his main topic- history, culture, stories about creativity. He chooses the position of “hermeticism”: isolation from the ideological postulates reigning in society. He finds support for his thoughts in the eternal classics. This is how De Chirico’s “neoclassicism” is born. His new aesthetic program had nothing in common with the “neoclassicism” of the masters of the Novecento group, their pompous and monumental style, but had a poetic and lyrical intonation, a search for a living connection between classics and modernity. The search for new poetics was accompanied by the search for new visual means. In the article “Return to Craft” (1919), published in “Valori plastici”, he wrote about the need to return to tradition, to the classical style of painting of the old masters. The slogan “pictur classicus” should become the leitmotif of his work and, as he believes, the goal of every true artist. In the 1920s De Chirico creates still lifes (“Sacred Fishes”, 1919, New York, Museum of Modern Art), paints portraits (“Composer Alfredo Casella”, 1924, private collection), articles about his favorite masters - A. Beklin (cm. BECKLIN Arnold), Rafaele (cm. RAFAEL SANTI), G. Courbet (cm. Gustave Courbet), Impressionists, copies paintings by old masters in the museums of Rome. A series of self-portraits from the 1920s. sounds like a dialogue with Titian, Raphael, Ingres, A. del Sarto (“Self-Portrait with Mother”. 1919. USA, E. James Foundation; “Self-Portrait with Brother”, 1924, private collection).
Since the 1920s, De Chirico has been constantly involved in the design opera performances(“Orpheus” by G. Monteverdi; “Iphigenia” by I. Pizzetti; “The Puritans” by V. Bellini, etc.), introducing the poetic metaphor of “metaphysical painting” into the scenography. One of the most integral painting series of this period was the cycle “Roman Villas” (1920s), the canvases of which are populated with images of ladies and knights, evoking literary images T. Tasso (cm. TASSO Torquato) and L. Ariosto (cm. ARIOSTO Ludovico), painting by S. Martini, fabulously mysterious landscapes of Ferrara masters. Like a memory of ancient culture, the paintings “The Departure of the Argonauts” (c. 1921, private collection) and “Orestes and Electra” (1922-1923, private collection) sound about childhood, the manner of execution of which makes one recall the works of Renaissance masters.
Second Parisian period (1925-29)
In connection with an exhibition scheduled for March 1925 at the Leon Rosenblum Gallery, De Chirico left for Paris. He continues to create canvases in the “neoclassical” style, enriching them with new impressions. In the canvases of the cycles “Horses by the Sea”, “Gladiators”, “Archaeologists”, “Furniture in the Valley”, scenes from the history of Ulysses, Achilles, Hippolytus - thoughts about ancient ancient culture and modernity are expressed, which are intertwined in a kind of timeless collage of dreams. His Amazons, gladiators, heroes of myths, “odysseys of things” from the “Furniture in the Valley” series, horses on the sea coast - figuratively express the thoughts of De Chirico, a romantic and dreamer from his novel “Hebdomeros” (1929, written in French) about that “it is better to live in fantasy.”
Even during his first stay in Paris, De Chirico became close to a group of surrealists (cm. SURREALISM), headed by A. Breton (cm. BRETON Andre), taking part in their exhibitions. His views influenced the surrealists, but in 1928 the relationship ended in a break and he was jokingly “excommunicated” from surrealism.
In Paris, De Chirico first turned to the fresco technique, painting “Horses on the Seashore” on the facade of a small pavilion with a swimming pool in the park of L. Rosenberg’s house. In 1933 in Italy, he took part in the creation of a cycle of fresco decorations for the exhibition pavilion for the Milan Triennale on the theme “Italian culture in its most significant manifestations.” A winged white Pegasus floated in the fresco against the backdrop of the Colosseum and St. Peter's Basilica, while poets and artists indulged in their craft with inspiration. Unfortunately, the painting was destroyed because its lyrical figurative language did not correspond to the ideological guidelines of the cultural program.
Back in Italy (1930-1978)
Period 1935-38 De Chirico spends his time in America at the invitation of collector J. Barnes, who organized a series of his exhibitions. The canvas with the ironic caption “And I was in New York” depicting ancient places against the backdrop of skyscrapers is evidence of new impressions and discovery new culture. He spends the period 1940-41 in Milan, creating works whose themes were inspired by the events of the war (lithographs for the “Apocalypse”), full of irony and fantasy. In Milan, De Chirico first turned to sculpture, in which he expressed the feelings of an anxious time (“Pieta”, bronze). From 1944 he settled permanently in Rome, where he completed the book “Memories of My Life” - reflections on the artist’s purpose. IN late creativity he remained true to his searches of the 1910-30s. Jokingly, he liked to say that he right hand- “realistic”, and the left one is “metaphysical”, since both aesthetic programs were equally important to him, who never felt the exhaustion of his subject matter. A short-lived fascination with Baroque art in the 1940s and 50s. (“Portrait in Costume of the 17th Century,” 1959, private collection) was a “sacrament of memory,” an opportunity to immerse oneself in a new layer of classical art. His later “metaphysical” works (the “Mysterious Baths” series, 1950-60s) were stylizations based on old topic, which has already become a classic, with which this “knight of metaphysics” entered art. In the 1950s-70s, he spent a lot of time illustrating books and worked for La Scala theaters in Milan and the Roman National Opera. London Covent Garden, theater in Athens.

encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .

• De Duve Christian Rene
• De Kooning Willem

See what “De Chirico Giorgio” is in other dictionaries:

Chirico, Giorgio de- Chirico, Giorgio de... Wikipedia

Chirico, Giorgio

Chirico Giorgio de- Giorgio de Chirico, 1936. Photograph by Carl van Vechten Giorgio de Chirico (Italian: Giorgio de Chirico, July 10, 1888, Volos, Greece November 20, 1978, Rome) Italian artist close to surrealism. Contents... Wikipedia

KIRIKO Giorgio- CHIRICO J., see De Chirico Giorgio (see DE CHIRICO Giorgio) ... encyclopedic Dictionary

KIRIKO Giorgio- (Chirico, Giorgio de) (1888 1978), Italian artist and art theorist, considered one of the harbingers of surrealism in modern painting. Giorgio de Chirico was born in the Greek city of Volos on July 10, 1888. He studied at the Higher Art... ... Collier's Encyclopedia

De Chirico, Giorgio- Giorgio de Chirico, 1936. Photograph by Carl van Vechten Giorgio de Chirico (Italian: Giorgio de Chirico, July 10, 1888, Volos, Greece November 20, 1978, Rome) Italian artist close to surrealism. Contents... Wikipedia

DE CHIRICO Giorgio- DE CHIRICO (De Chirico) Giorgio (1888 1978) Italian painter. Head of the metaphysical school in painting. De Chirico’s urban landscapes express the impression of the alarming frozenness of the world, its alienation from man (Disturbing Muses, 1917) ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Kiriko- Chirico, Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio de Giorgio de Chirico, 1936. Photograph by Carl van Vechten ... Wikipedia

Giorgio Chirico- Giorgio de Chirico, 1936. Photograph by Carl van Vechten Giorgio de Chirico (Italian: Giorgio de Chirico, July 10, 1888, Volos, Greece November 20, 1978, Rome) Italian artist close to surrealism. Contents... Wikipedia

February 2nd, 2012 , 10:40 pm

I wanted to collect in one place some of the “metaphysical” landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico, painted in the 10s and 20s of the last century, and the surreal landscapes of Salvador Dali, created fifteen to twenty years later. It is interesting to see how de Chirico’s ideas were reflected in Dali’s work. Moreover, everyone in Russia knows Dali, and relatively few know de Chirico.

Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico (1888 – 1978) became famous for his works in the style of so-called “metaphysical painting”. The main method of metaphysics was the contrast between a realistically accurately depicted object and the strange atmosphere in which it was placed, which created a surreal effect. The founder of this trend was de Chirico himself, and later it was formed small group like-minded artists. In the early 20s of the twentieth century, the metaphysical movement essentially disappeared from the scene.

Let me make a reservation right away that my comments are not at all a claim to art historical analysis, but only an attempt to express my impressions, nothing more.

Here's one of the first famous works de Chirico:

Giorgio de Chirico. The Mystery of Arrival and Afternoon, 1912

The landscape is emphatically geometric, the sky is neatly painted with even horizontal strokes, exaggerated straight lines of shadows and a chessboard grotesquely emphasize adherence to the laws of perspective - all this gives the landscape a fascinating lifelessness and alienates and fences it off from living reality. The figures of two self-absorbed people create a dream effect.

Giorgio de Chirico. Melancholy have a nice day, 1913

Exaggerated perspective, sky painted with even strokes. Here we see two elements present in many of de Chirico's landscapes: the colonnade and the statue. Let us also note that the elements of the landscape (building, person, statue) are placed on an almost ideal geometric plane. Because of this, it seems as if the landscape is disintegrating into separate artifacts - an association arises not with reality, but with the exhibition of sculptures in the exhibition hall.

Giorgio de Chirico. Piazza d'Italia, 1914, And Piazza d’Italia (Autumn Melancholy), 1914

And again - exaggerated perspective, flat sky, colonnades, statues, ideal flatness of the landscape. Let us note two more elements that are repeated in de Chirico's paintings - the rotunda and waving flags (both are present, for example, in the 1912 painting above).

To further emphasize the flat surface, de Chirico often places objects on something like a plank platform, or simply outlines the plane itself:

Giorgio de Chirico. Restless Muses, 1916, And The Great Metaphysician, 1917

Salvador Dali first appeared in Paris in 1926 and apparently saw de Chirico's work around the same time. Soon Dali changes his art style: he stops exercising in the spirit of cubism and begins to paint landscapes that are compositionally reminiscent of the paintings of de Chirico:

Salvador Dali. Phantasmagoria, 1929

An endless lined plane on which columns, statues and strange objects are placed - we saw all this in de Chirico.

Salvador Dali. Fountain, 1930

Salvador Dali. Paranoid Horse Woman, 1930

On last picture, by the way, we see direct references to de Chirico: the red tower in the background at the top left and the base of a giant red column. This is what de Chirico looks like:

Giorgio de Chirico. Red Tower, 1913, And Conquest of the Philosopher, 1914

Combining de Chirico’s beloved image of a red tower/pipe and a hooligan cannon with two cannonballs from the painting “The Conquest of the Philosopher,” Dali draws the following composition:

Salvador Dali. Red anthropomorphic tower, 1930

The typical de Chirico flag at the top of the... hmm-hmm... building has not been forgotten either. In general, Dali loved to joke - this is well known.

Let us give another example of the overlap of themes between de Chirico and Dali (the theme is archeology, the image is a hybrid of human figures and buildings):

De Chirico, Archaeologists, 1927, And Dali, Archaeological Echoes of Millet's Angelus, 1935

Another example of the roll call of artistic images of de Chirico and Dali:

Giorgio de Chirico. Fortune Teller's Reward, 1913, And The Mystery and Melancholy of the Street, 1913

Salvador Dali. Morphological echo, ca. 1936

The arch on the right side of the picture evokes associations with the arch from “The Fortune Teller’s Reward,” and the girl with the hoop turned into a girl with a skipping rope - an image present in Dali on several canvases (following de Chirico, Dali acquired the habit of repeating his favorite image on different paintings). In “Morphological Echo,” Dali used one of his favorite techniques: the same object is presented in different guises (the silhouette of a bell in the archway almost exactly repeats the silhouette of a girl with a skipping rope). We see the same technique at one of the most famous paintings Dali:

Salvador Dali. Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937

Let's pay attention to the area with a chess cage on the right side of the picture - there is a direct association with de Chirico's 1912 painting, shown at the very beginning of this article.

But here is just a landscape in the spirit of de Chirico, which Dali began to paint in 1935 - but did not finish:

* * *
Beginning in 1920, Giorgio de Chirico gradually moved away from the "metaphysical" landscape into pure form, the compositions of his paintings become more complex, the style becomes more classical:

Giorgio de Chirico. Roman Square (Mercury and Metaphysics), 1920

Giorgio de Chirico. Departure of the Argonauts, 1921

Giorgio de Chirico. Strange Travelers (Romanesque Landscape), 1922

Giorgio de Chirico. Coast of Thessaly, 1926

In the paintings “Romanesque Square”, “Romanesque Landscape” and “The Shore of Thessaly” we see new (compared to the paintings of the 10s) repeating elements: statues and people on the roofs.

Since the late 20s, de Chirico painted mainly landscapes in the neo-Baroque style. However, until he was very old, he liked to create copies of works from his early period from time to time.

Giorgio de Chirico, the outstanding Italian surrealist artist, the founder of metaphysical painting, was born and raised in Greece, and perhaps it is this fact that makes him so different from his colleagues in the workshop.
De Chirico, rather, is not even a surrealist - he is an unrealist, his reality is not surreal, it is unreal, like in a dream. He is the lord of dreams, not the creator of another reality. The action on his canvases takes place in another dimension - in the dimension of dreams.

De Chirico “Melancholy and Mystery of the Street”, 1914 - blog.i.ua

For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind when looking at the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico is their similarity to the novels of Vladimir Nabokov. The same expanded, endless space, the same absence of sound: there is a picture, but there is no sound. How many times have you screamed silently in your sleep? Find yourself in a room without walls, ceiling and floor?

When you look at de Chirico’s paintings, not for a moment do you experience any bewilderment or a heavy feeling: they are light, like the light, strict, stingy Greek Antiquity, on which de Chirico was brought up, having been born in the Greek city of Volos on the shores of the Pagasean Gulf.

De Chirico “Nostalgia for the Infinite” - http:/blog.i.ua

We made Giorgio de Chirico “Person of the Week” for several reasons: firstly, because he is connected with Greece by an umbilical cord, like a son with his mother, and this connection runs like a red thread in his art, and secondly, because this year two anniversaries of de Chirico are celebrated at once - 130 years from the date of his birth and 35 years from the date of his death, and thirdly - because de Chirico’s personal life also had something to do with Russia... through his two Russian wives!

Well, to be completely frank, the image of Giorgio de Chirico surfaced in our memory in connection with the recent night journey of the legendary Mudzurisa (Koptelki) train along the historical railway line connecting the villages of the mountain (and peninsula) at the beginning of the 20th century. Pelion, where centaurs lived in mythological times.

What is the connection between the master of painting, the Italian de Chirico, and the provincial “Koptelka”, we will tell you below.

Living mythology

It was Evaristo, whose name is still remembered with kind words in Greek Thessaly, who built a branch in Pelion, among dense pine, oak, and cedar forests, where, as the old-timers say, to this day especially sensitive ears can hear the clatter of centaurs’ hooves. It was thanks to Evaristo de Chirico that “Muzouris”, “Koptelka”, ran from village to village of Pilion, making it easier for the inhabitants of Pilion to move around.

Self-portrait. Photo from the site - uploads4.wikipaintings.org

Of the two sons of the de Chirico family, neither the eldest Giorgio nor the younger Andrea became an engineer, as their strict father wished. Strict, but not tyrannical: he not only did not interfere with his children’s passion for art, but, on the contrary, encouraged them to study painting, music, and literature. And, if he had lived a little longer - and Evaristo died in 1905 - he would probably have been proud of his teaching talents and parental tolerance. Giorgio became an outstanding painter, Andrea, who adopted the pseudonym Alberto Savigno, became a famous writer, theorist of metaphysical art, musician and artist. True, Andrea, who was only 3 years younger than Giorgio, lived 26 years less in this world: he died in 1952, at the age of 61. It was precisely in the brevity of his life that he was like his father...

And yet Evaristo was an artist. Let him be an artist in metal, an artist of living paintings that moved against a living background, amazingly beautiful landscape. He was a creator, a tamer of nature.

“I spent my first years in the land of Classicism, playing on the shores that remember the ship “ARGO” still setting off on its voyage, at the foot of the mountain that witnessed the birth of the fleet-footed Achilles and the wise instructions of his teacher, the centaur,”- Dorgio de Chirico wrote in his autobiography, like Achilles, brought up on ancient Greek wisdom.

Both great de Chirico brothers lingered deep in their souls in their childhood, which ended not even with the move to Athens in 1899, but with the death of their father and departure to Munich. Greece for both will remain a symbol of innocence, cloudless happiness, that very period in which, like in a work of art, “there should be no logic,” as Giorgio de Chirico argued. Andrea de Chirico, more precisely, Alberto Savigno, in 1919 in his poem of the same name, told his readers about the “tragedy of childhood,” more precisely, lost childhood, as if lost paradise:

“Be quiet and rest. It's quiet here
The very voice of life. Ancient lament
The dying echo will return later,
The moment the charm dies.
Bow before the unchanging peace,
In which it melts, losing magic,
Chant of the Siren.
Faster than to the calling coasts
You will land, they will go into exile,
Shrouded in fog, Compassion
Beloved daughters - hopes

Translation by Katerina Kanaka

We don't know how it would have turned out creative destiny Giorgio de Chirico, if he had stayed in Greece and completed his studies at the Polytechnic, with the outstanding Greek teacher-painters Giorgos Iakovidis and Constantine Volonakis, in whose workshops he spent two years, from 1903 to 1905. In any case, the move to Munich and the Munich Academy of Arts did not make the realist artist Giorgio de Chirico. He was conquered by Paris, where he moved to his brother, and where he met Andre Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso.

De Chirico "Archaeologists". Photo from the site - smallbay.ru/chirico.html

Ancient art, the dream of Greece, memories and acute feeling loneliness, blurred boundaries between reality and dreams became the material from which Giorgio de Chirico made his paintings. In the middle life path- together with his Russian wife Raisa Gurevich, and for the last 45 years of his life - with his wife of Russian origin, Isabella Pakszver.

Russian wives of Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico met his first wife, ballerina Raisa Gurevich, in 1923 in Italy, at the Pirandello Theater, during a production of Igor Stravinsky’s play “The Story of a Soldier”: the artist made the scenery, the ballerina danced. On next year they got married, moved to Paris, and Raisa left ballet to devote herself to her more talented husband. But the role of a housewife did not quite suit her: having become interested in archeology, she graduated from the department of classical archeology at the Sorbonne. A creative woman could not be content with just the role of the wife of a genius: she had enough strength to make her contribution, if not to art, but to science, and she made it.

After parting with de Chirico in the early 30s, former ballerina and an accomplished archaeologist moved to Italy. The last marriage of Raisa Gurevich with the director of the archaeological expedition, the outstanding Italian archaeologist Guido Calza, was more fruitful: Raisa Gurevich Calza herself became an outstanding scientist-historian, whose contribution to science was highly appreciated by the Italian government, which awarded her a gold medal for her contribution to Italian culture.

It is noteworthy that Raisa Gurevich-Calza, who was widowed less than 10 years after her marriage, in 1946, survived Giorgio de Chirico by only a year, and was, like the artist, buried in a Roman cemetery.

After separating from Raisa Gurevich, Giorgio de Chirico married for the second time in 1933 to Isabella Pakszver, a woman with Russian roots, with whom he lived until the end of his life.

We couldn't find practically anything about her. Perhaps only in a short article by Konstantin Korelov “Paradoxes of Painting”. It does not indicate the name of "de Chirico's wife", but we're talking about specifically about Isabella Paxzver:

"Boris Messerer, now - folk artist Russia, and in the 60s of the last century, an aspiring theater decorator, at one time visited Giorgio de Chirico in Rome. Messerer's memoirs vividly characterize the last years of the Italian artist.

“Upon entering the apartment, we were shocked by the luxury of the furnishings. On the walls are huge paintings in golden frames, depicting some horses and naked women on these horses, rushing somewhere. Plots of baroque content, having nothing to do with metaphysical painting. A completely different Chirico - salon, luxurious, but absolutely no avant-garde ideas.”

Chiriko’s wife served as translator at the meeting, but there was no conversation as such. The guests asked to show them “those” paintings that made the painter’s name, but the wife stubbornly pointed her finger at the academic daub hanging on the walls, claiming that this was the true Chirico.

De Chirico “School of Gladiators” - http://blog.i.ua

“Suddenly, Signor de Chirico goes somewhere and suddenly brings out first one picture - a small metaphysical composition, then a second, third, fourth and puts them just like that, on the floor in the hallway. He understood what we were talking about! We are shocked, these are the pictures we wanted to see! His wife was very unhappy with this whole situation. And then it turned out that she was friends with Furtseva, our minister of culture at that time, and they spoke the same language, the language of socialist realism. They had an ideological friendship, and Madame did not want to know any avant-garde..."

That's the story! Isabella Pakszver was a friend of Ekaterina Furtseva!

Truly the ways of the Lord are inscrutable!

Just like the paths of art!

The film "Paradox" is about Giorgio de Chirico. Source - www.youtube.com/paradoxirina

Deserted squares of large cities, worn out by the midday sun or tired after sunset... Antique columns and arches, proudly and lonely towering above the ground... Statues silently looking at this melancholy... Paintings Giorgio de Chirico imbued not only with paint, but also with mystery, anxiety, silence.

The artist said: “We must not forget that the picture should be a reflection of an internal sensation, and internal means strange, strange means unknown or not entirely known.”.

Many believe that the action in de Chirico's paintings takes place in the dimension of dreams. On these canvases everything is as believable and surreal at the same time, as in “night videos of the subconscious.” Strange combinations of objects, strange atmosphere, fantastic reality. In fact, all this is not just like that. All these are features of the direction in art invented by de Chirico - metaphysical painting.

The artist founded this movement together with his friend Carlo Carra at the beginning of the 20th century. The popular Wikipedia gives the following explanation of metaphysical painting: “In metaphysical painting, metaphor and dream become the basis for thought to go beyond ordinary logic, and the contrast between a realistically accurately depicted object and the strange atmosphere in which it is placed enhances the surreal effect.”.

Unfortunately, already in the early 20s, metaphysical painting ceased to exist. The last two exhibitions of this art direction took place in Germany in 1921 and 1924. However, de Chirico’s brainchild did not die, but only grew into something more - into the great Surrealism. The father of this movement, Henri Breton, said that only the works of de Chirico made it possible to express the program of the surrealists through painting. He also called the artist “the creator of modern mythology.”

Heat, silence, anxiety... Stifling, heavy atmosphere and an extinct city. A little girl with a hoop quickly runs across a deserted square straight towards an ominous shadow peeking out from around the corner. A white building with arches characteristic of the artist, drawn as if using a ruler, goes into the distance. The empty van in the foreground grins ominously with its open lid. It is interesting that the image of the girl is completely atypical for de Chirico’s painting. Many art historians believe that the child in this painting appeared due to an exhibition taking place at that time in France. They say that de Chirico was impressed by the work “A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte” and transferred the little girl to his canvas - the characters are indeed very similar. It is also interesting that the objects in the painting “The Mystery and Melancholy of the Street” are depicted in different projections: the van in a geometric one, and the houses in a perspective one. They have different coefficient distortion, thereby increasing the effect of strangeness.

But let's get back to the plot. What's going on? Where have all the adults gone? Why is this child calmly rolling a hoop towards danger? What did the author want to say with this picture? You must find the answers to these questions yourself. In your own subconscious.

Giorgio de Chirico believed that real world– this is just a thin shell, under which hides the dark and mysterious world of the subconscious. He wanted to reveal secret meaning things through objective and material forms familiar to the eye. The task of the painter, according to the artist, is to be a guide and mediator between the viewer and his symbols hidden from consciousness.

The great Cubist called the artist “the singer of the train stations.” This is due to the fact that trains and stations are too common in his paintings. Here, for example, is the painting “Piazza d’Italia: melancholy.” We see a deserted square, a statue of Ariadne, arches. Many art historians believe that this plot is an interpretation of the myth of Ariadne and her thread. By the way, we see the same heroine in another work - “Ariadne, the silent statue.” Again, the same components of the mosaic: arches, shadows, a statue, a tower, pointed corners and a sketchy image. Some may see this as an imitation of Picasso, with whom the artist was friends. There is also another painting - “Piazza d’Italia with equestrian statue" It shows everything the same, only different. In general, many of the artist’s works on metaphysical themes are very similar to each other. “The Happiness of Return”, “Melancholy”, “The Mystery of the Day” and “The Red Tower”, as well as the above-described paintings of the Italian square, echo each other.

As for the trains, it is interesting that Father Giorgio de Chirico supervised the construction railway along the Athens-Thessaloniki line. Perhaps all these locomotives are some kind of greeting to one’s own childhood or an introspection of mental trauma. It was not for nothing that the painter read the works of Nietzsche.

“I began to paint pictures in which I could express that powerful and mystical feeling that opened up to me while reading Nietzsche: Italian cities on a clear autumn day, the melancholy of midday... I can’t imagine art any other way. Thought must break away from what we call logic and meaning, free itself from all human attachments, in order to see objects from a new angle, to highlight their previously unknown features.”, said the artist.