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

IN Tretyakov Gallery The first Russian exhibition of Giorgio de Chirico, one of the main Italian surrealists, known for his metaphysical painting, opened. Buro 24/7 tells you what you need to know about the artist before visiting the exhibition.

Metaphysics and early creativity

The de Chirico family comes from Greece. After my father's death future artist moves with his family to Munich, where he continues his studies at the Academy fine arts. During his Munich years he was influenced by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger. Their ideas form his worldview, which he himself calls “metaphysics” - one of the main branches of philosophy, which examines questions of primary existence. Metaphysical painting would not receive its name until 1917, when de Chirico met the artist Carlo Carra, whose search for a formal language was in many ways close to the master.

Self-portrait in a black sweater. Giorgio de Chirico. 1957

Nevertheless, all of de Chirico’s works of the 1910s can be classified as “metaphysics” - desert landscapes, where lonely characters appear against the backdrop of urban architecture with expressive shadows, or still lifes with classical busts, fruits and balls. As follows from the artist’s own memoirs, the first metaphysical insight arose in his mind in Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. “It suddenly seemed to me as if I was seeing everything around me for the first time,” he later wrote in his memoirs. This episode formed the basis for the first metaphysical picture— “The Mystery of an Autumn Afternoon” (1910).

Another important factor influences in de Chirico’s work are the works of the German symbolists, Max Klinger and Arnold Böcklin, with whom de Chirico himself is initially compared. The pictorial and philosophical influences of this time would appear only a few years later, during the artist's stay in Paris. Following Munich, de Chirico moved to Milan and Florence, and after the war he finally reached Paris, where in the 1910s the career of de Chirico and other masters of the era took place - Pablo Picasso, Amadeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Constantin Brancusi and many others. Although de Chirico’s work is not directly related to them, Paris as an artistic environment played an important role in his formation.

"Melancholy and the Mystery of the Street." Giorgio de Chirico. 1914

Another artist who influenced the formation of metaphysical painting was younger brother de Chirico - Alberto Savinio. Together with him, de Chirico published the magazine “Plastic Values”, and also published a number of theoretical works, in which the fundamental principles of metaphysical painting were defined. Among them are transparency and irony, which later became main characteristic poetic and dreamy paintings of metaphysicians.

The first part of the exhibition is devoted to the period of the 1910s and metaphysics as the main method of de Chirico. The works of the 1920s and 30s, in which the artist reinterprets antiquity and the Old Masters, represent a logical continuation of the first stage. Between them, the viewer finds himself in the world of Diaghilev’s ballets, in the creation of costumes for which de Chirico was directly involved.

Costumes for Diaghilev's ballets and a return to eternal themes

If at the beginning of his career, costumes and scenery for Diaghilev were created mainly by members of the World of Art group - Lev Bakst, Valentin Serov and Alexander Benois, then Andre Derain and Pablo Picasso are working on this in Paris. The latter also created the scenography for the ballet Pulcinella in 1920. In 1931, after the death of Diaghilev, this production returned to the stage in the scenery of de Chirico. In addition, the artist designed costumes for latest project Diaghilev's Ball (1929), as well as for Proteus, staged by the Russian Ballet of Monte Carlo at Covent Garden.

"Song of Love". Giorgio de Chirico. 1914

The turn of the 1920s-30s in de Chirico’s work was marked not only by work in the theater, but also by interest in historical and mythical stories. During these same years, he began working on the aforementioned magazine “Plastic Values,” which revived the ideals of classical painting. Such historical subjects appear on de Chirico’s canvases as Trojan War and the Battle of Thermopylae, and fragments of aqueducts, columns and temples are formed into single figures of “Archaeologists”. These motifs serve as references to the profession of his wife Raisa Gurevich-Krat. In those same years, de Chirico often turned to the art of the Old Masters: among his paintings it is easy to recognize the prototypes of Watteau, Titian, Boucher, Fragonard, Canaletto and Rubens.

Separate sections of the exhibition are presented by the artist’s sculpture and graphics - terracotta figures in bronze and sketches of the same mannequins, as well as preparatory sketches for paintings. The cycle of one hundred works presented at the exhibition ends with the concept of “Neo-metaphysics” - that’s what they call late period creativity from 1968 to 1976. At this time, the artist created copies of existing works, reworking them in a new style, much more complex. A striking example This is “The Inner Metaphysics of the Workshop,” where the artist’s seemingly familiar canvases are depicted inside a new painting.

« Internal metaphysics of the workshop». Giorgio de Chirico. 1969

De Chirico most significantly influenced the painting of the surrealists, whose association arose ten years after the appearance of metaphysical artists. Without the work of de Chirico, it is difficult to imagine the works of Salvador Dali or Rene Magritte, and Andre Breton himself was so fascinated by the painting “The Brain of a Child” that he got off the bus when he saw it in the window.

Although de Chirico is associated with Russia only through his work for Diaghilev’s ballets, curator Tatiana Goryacheva draws parallels between the Italian artist and Suprematist Malevich, and the dreamy Deineka, and the cubists Shevchenko and Rozhdestvensky. This can best be understood only by seeing it with your own eyes.

In Greece, de Chirico receives a classical art education, in Munich makes discoveries that help him develop own style. De Chirico's metaphysical painting originates in German philosophy XIX century.

At the beginning of the 19th century, an unprecedented flowering of culture occurred in Germany, and especially in Bavaria. Many new ones are emerging philosophical systems and aesthetic theories. Munich is becoming the artistic center of Europe on a par with Paris.

DE CHIRICO AND GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

After his father's death in 1905, de Chirico felt lonely and lost. The artist plunges headlong into the study of world culture and mythology, trying to find answers to the questions that concern him. The first thing he decides to overcome is his lack of mental balance and learn to think clearly. Thanks to the study of the works of German philosophers - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Oggo Weininger (1880-1903), the young artist begins to form his own worldview and his own plastic theory.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the philosopher and psychologist Weininger, author of the famous book “Gender and Character,” was especially popular among Munich students. In his discussions, Weininger uses the concepts of an artist-researcher and an artist-clergyman (by the way, he includes Arnold Böcklin, whose work inspired de Chirico in that period), to the latter. Weininger's works helped the artist develop his own metaphysical theory. The German psychologist, in particular, wrote that the constantly changing surrounding reality contains mandatory so-called independent elements - geometric shapes, designs and symbols of objects. It is these independent elements that de Chirico takes into account in his work.

Since 1908, de Chirico began to study the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The ideas he gained from them would also have a significant influence on his metaphysical painting. Following the example of the German philosopher, who in his reasoning pays a lot of attention to the process of self-improvement, de Chirico turns to the poetry of transformations as a way to discover the abilities of the observer. Arthur Schopenhauer, in turn, makes the artist think about the processes that originate in objective world. De Chirico also speaks of "the atmosphere in the moral sense", thus explaining his admiration for the work of Klinger and Böcklin. The ideas of all the above-mentioned philosophers will be close to the artist throughout his life and will find an original reflection in his work.

PARISIAN INFLUENCES

In July 1911, Giorgio de Chirico came to Paris for the first time. He is only twenty-three and is mainly interested in modern avant-garde movements, especially Cubism with its analytical approach to the rendering of form.

The leaders of the cubist revolution - Picasso and Braque captured young artist, prompted him to search for new formal solutions. De Chirico subsequently creates several canvases that have an unconventional format, for example, trapezoidal or triangular. In the first paintings of Fernand Léger (1881-1955), which appeared simultaneously, de Chirico was attracted by “mechanized” images of people, which inspired him to create a whole series of paintings with mannequin figures.

In Paris, de Chirico often visits the Louvre, where he first of all gets acquainted with the art of antiquity. A lover of archeology and antiquity, the artist looks for new impulses for his metaphysical painting in Greek, Roman and Middle Eastern sculpture.

While in Paris, de Chirico met the surrealist photographer Jean Eugene Atget (1856-1927), a master of depicting deserted Parisian streets, houses and squares. In de Chirico's works of this period there is the same atmosphere of sadness and emptiness as in Atget's photographs, which internally brings these masters closer together.

METAPHYSICAL PAINTING

However, as Guillaume Apollinaire testifies, de Chirico “very soon departs from the Parisian avant-garde to create his own art, where empty palaces, towers, symbolic objects and mannequins. All this is depicted in pure colors, overflowing with the impression of the artificiality of the real..."

With his painting, which he calls “metaphysical,” de Chirico seeks to destroy logical explanations reality.

Using a synthesis of various influences, the artist develops the foundations of metaphysical painting, which will never become a movement in the broad sense of the word. Not subordinate to any clearly formed doctrine, metaphysical painting would become the lot of several artists - de Chirico himself, Carlo Cappa (1881-1966), Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964).

Metaphysical painting is characterized by poetry of immobility, rigidity, tension in the presentation of form and color, rigidity of line and sharpness of light and shadow transitions. It is based on the absolute denial of reality that realism presents to us, focusing on the depiction of selected objects and the deliberate emphasis on individual figurative elements.

These provisions lead to the fact that metaphysical artists turn to the harmony characteristic of the Italian Renaissance and the works of the great classical masters.

However, in metaphysical painting, objects placed in a single space and subject to a single perspective never complement each other, they are not interconnected. The elements of these compositions are combined using purely formalistic techniques. De Chirico is the first artist to set out on this path back in 1910. Over the next few years, he will accumulate and systematize his inventions and findings. In 1917, when de Chirico’s figurative alphabet was already quite clearly formed, another Italian artist, de Chirico’s junior by seven years, Carlo Kappa, began to follow the same path. In 1919, he published a collection of texts entitled "Metaphysical Painting". Carra also includes in his book articles by de Chirico - “On Metaphysical Art” and “We, Metaphysicians”, which were also published in the Roman magazines “Cronache de”attuait”a” and “Valori plastici”.

According to Carr, metaphysical painting must reach a certain degree of authenticity in conveying reality in frozen and motionless images. This publication attracted the attention of the painter Giorgio Morandi, who soon joined de Chirico and Carra. Thus formed creative Group existed until 1920.

The fact that “metaphysicians” combine elements of fantasy and realistic depiction of reality in their paintings attracts surrealists to their work. The atmosphere of “disturbing unusualness” that reigns in the paintings of the “metaphysicists” is very close to the ideas of the surrealists, who strive to “change life” by freeing the subconscious and blurring the lines between sleep and reality. In the early 20s, de Chirico's influence on the surrealists, especially on the painting of Max Ernst, was enormous.

Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico is one of the most mysterious in the history of art. His early painting (1910–1919), which he called metaphysics, a discovery no less radical than Cubism, anticipated the emergence of surrealism and brought him a fame comparable to that of Picasso. No wonder they wrote in those days: “Two phenomena dominate the art of the twentieth century: Picasso and Chirico.” However, in the 1920s. the young artist unexpectedly renounces his own brainchild and turns to classicism - a one-of-a-kind case.

An inexplicable zigzag in his work led Chirico, according to some critics, to a slow slide into mediocre mannerism. Others felt that by engaging in dialogue with the great classics, he was deliberately exploring the ambiguous territory of kitsch, which for him had become synonymous with postmodernism. “If I had died at 31, like Seurat, or at 39, like Apollinaire, today I would be considered one of the main painters of the century. Do you know what those stupid critics would say?! What's the most great artist-a surrealist is not Dali, not Magritte, not Delvaux, but me, Chirico!” - an Italian once remarked ironically. He had ahead long life, he died in 1978 at the age of 90.

In the scenery of childhood

The artist was born in 1888 in Greece, the land of gods and heroes, where every stone is covered with legend. Antiquity was the familiar setting of his childhood. His father, Baron Evaristo de Chirico, a Florentine engineer who built railways, instilled in his sons a taste for classical culture. Her mother was from a noble Genoese family and was fond of art.

His parents guessed the boy's abilities early: at the age of three, Giorgio received his first drawing lessons, and at the age of 12 he painted his first painting in a painting course at the Polytechnic School of Athens. He had to interrupt the studies he had begun here: after the death of his father, the family moved to Munich, where Giorgio became a student at the Art Academy. He is interested in the painting of Arnold Böcklin, the music of Wagner, and reads Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Their gloomy view of the world - a prophecy of the decline of civilizations, the glorification of a universe that does not need either man or humanism - became the philosophical basis of the painting of Chirico, who embarked on the path of creativity on the eve of the First World War.

Arriving in Italy, Giorgio went to Florence in 1910, where he painted city landscapes with church facades, fountains, empty shells of towers, arcades, and columns. In his fantasy world of stopped time and frozen movement, equestrian statues of unknown leaders rise in the squares, countless arches of galleries stretch to the distant horizons, their porticoes are illuminated by a bright, almost electric light. There is an atmosphere of emptiness, expectation, lack of life here - it is a phantom city. All architectural forms on deserted flat spaces are given over to the power of the confrontation between light and shadow, their sharp contrast creates the impression of a revived vision, a strange performance developing according to the logic of a dream. “If Gustav Moreau, Arcimboldo or Bosch gave illustrations to dreams, then Chirico plunges us into his dream,” the critics wrote.

Feeling of mystery

In his memoirs, Chirico recalled his first steps in metaphysical painting: “I tried to express in my subjects the feeling of mystery that I experienced when reading Nietzsche’s books. It is akin to the melancholy of clear autumn days, the afternoon silence of sunlit Italian cities.”

The Riddle of One Day (II). 1914. Museum of Modern Art, San Paolo

“What else can I love if not a mystery?” - the young artist wrote this question in his self-portrait in 1911. The word “riddle” is repeated in the titles of his early paintings: “The Riddle of Arrival at Midday” (1912), “The Riddle of One Day (1914), where he seems to be trying to guess external reality some invisible entity. “Art,” he argued, “is a fatal net, capturing on the fly those strange phenomena that burst out, like large mysterious butterflies, from everyday life.”

It is not surprising that Chirico was enthusiastically received in 1911 by Parisian modernist artists. He participates in the autumn Salon, where he is noticed by Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire. In his studio, the poet arranges an exhibition of thirty works by Chirico, writes laudatory articles about him, introduces him to his circle, and introduces him to Andre Breton. Paris captured the young Chirico, as it did with Chagall, turning him from a naive provincial storyteller into a real artist, bringing him under the stage lights. At the Salon of Independents he sells his first work, “The Red Tower” (1913). His painting “Anxious Morning” (1913) was acquired by one of the most famous Marchands in Paris, and in the 1920s. this painting ends up in the collection of Paul Eluard and Andre Breton, two key figures in the emerging surrealist movement.

Red Tower. 1913. Peggy Guggenheim collection, Venice

Magazines and newspapers vied with each other to praise his painting. Chirico himself later claimed that he did not fall for the bait of the immoderate enthusiasm of his Parisian friends: “When they saw my paintings, they decided to convert me, like Rousseau’s Customs Officer, a primitivist artist whom Breton took under his wing. I went to them for several months. We met at Apollinaire's on Saturdays from five to eight. Brancusi was there, Derain, who never opened his mouth, and Max Jacob, who talked incessantly. Paintings by Picasso and other cubists were hung on the walls. Later, Apollinaire added two or three of my works to them, including his portrait.”

The famous “Portrait of Apollinaire” (1914) became prophetic. The canvas depicts a plaster bust of the ancient poet wearing black glasses, which emphasizes that it is the blind poet who is able to see the invisible. Above him, on a green background, is the black profile of Apollinaire with a target drawn on his head - Chirico marked exactly the place where the poet would be wounded by a shell fragment during the war.

The joy of returning

erupted World War forced Chirico to return to Italy, where he was drafted into the army. His not too strong build saved him from the hardships of military service; he was assigned to a hospital in Ferrara and could take up painting. Here Chirico met the futurist artist Carlo Carra, with whom he later founded the magazine “Metaphysical Painting” and developed a new aesthetics - metaphysics. He wrote: “A nation, located at its origins, loves myths and legends - everything that amazes seems monstrous and inexplicable... As it develops, it complicates primitive images - this is how History is born from the original myths. The present European era bears in itself countless traces of previous civilizations and their spiritual imprints and inevitably gives birth to art reflecting ancient myths."

Montparnasse station, or melancholy departure. 1914.
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Big tower. 1913. Art collection of the earth
North Rhine-Westphalia, Dusseldorf

In the painting “The Joy of Return,” painted in 1916, a steam locomotive crosses an unknown city against a background of gray facades, clouds of smoke rising above it, or maybe it’s just a cloud on the horizon. The shadow of the building, drawn with geometric precision, emphasizes the desolation of the square, where there is no trace of human presence. This is the landscape of the area as if at the very beginning of history, even before its appearance. Kiriko combines close-up and distant plans, distorts space, avoiding reliefs and shades of color. His obsessive dream consists of the same elements, moving from picture to picture: arcades, towers, squares, sharp black shadows, trains, maps of non-existent worlds, stopped clocks. His canvases are perceived as an illustration of Mandelstam’s “breathless world”:

When the city moon comes out,
And slowly the dense city is illuminated by it,
And the night grows, full of despondency and copper,
And the melodious wax gives way to rough time:
And the cuckoo cries on its stone tower,
And the pale reaper descending into the lifeless world,
Quietly moving the huge spokes of shadows
And he throws yellow straw onto the wooden floor.

Many of his fantasy symbols existed in reality: the Greek city of Volos, where he grew up, with trains flashing between the houses; Turin, where he lived briefly in his youth, and Ferrara, his place of military service. Turin towers are often present in his canvases, especially the Antonelli Tower built in the 19th century. Those who love Chirico will say that even today you cannot walk around midday Turin without remembering his first works.

Metamorphosis

It is believed that for decades the phantom city depicted by Chirico remained a standard of modernist imagination. In the 1920s Gross et al. German artists used its symbols to express their own vision of an alienated urban world. It is impossible to imagine the majority of surrealists without the influence of Chirico: Dali, Ernst, Tanguy, Magritte, Delvaux - all came from the early Chirico and considered him their master.

Hector and Andromache. 1942. Private collection, Bologna

IN famous painting"Hector and Andromache" (1916) Chirico introduces new image: strange mannequins that replace humans, without arms, without faces, with orthopedic prosthetics instead of legs. These frightening robots inhabit his canvases from 1914–1916. “Anxious Muses” and “Great Metaphysics” anticipate the chilling atmosphere of Kafka’s “Castle” or Borges’s Labyrinth. His painting reflects the meaninglessness of life and the incomprehensible mystery human existence. The artist himself was not yet thirty years old at that time.

Anxious muses. 1924–1961. Private collection, New York

In those same years, deserted city landscapes are either completely deserted, or those where a person, reduced to a small point, is impersonal, wrote Maurice Utrillo, who drowned his loneliness in alcohol. Chirico had his own drama: at the age of 16 he lost his father, who raised him in the traditions of the Renaissance, and since then his ghost has hovered over the artist’s paintings. His early sense of loss was combined in his perception with a longing for another irreversible loss: the gradual disappearance under the pressure of modernism of the great classical culture that stood at his cradle. Perhaps this ultimately caused Chirico’s metamorphosis, which was unexpected for many.

“Ancient gods look homeless in his hopelessly deserted Italian squares, and plucked fruits in the foreground of the canvases are reminiscent of paradise lost. The shadows lengthen as the heavy twilight deepens, people disappear, they are replaced by symbolic silhouettes, shrinking to the size of an ant, while the silhouettes of a plant or factory with furnace pipes grow, occupying the entire space to the horizon - this is how Moloch looks like in the modern era. , - they wrote about his paintings.

In the bosom of the classics

Just as unexpectedly as it began, the period of metaphysics suddenly ended: Chirico in the 1920s. converts to another faith, taking refuge in the bosom of the classics. Picasso and Derain at the same time experienced a similar temptation to “return to order,” but Chirico was the only one of this generation who, as respectable criticism wrote, “turned to the light of tradition, leaving others in the primitive darkness of modernism.” The war is over, and the Italian goes to the museums of Paris, Rome, Florence with their untold riches. According to him, one day in the summer of 1919, walking in front of a Titian painting at the Villa Borghese, he was shocked by the master’s painting.

Having put an end to his early works, Chirico began to preach a return to the Quattrocento technique. He, who wrote dreams and dreams, now swore allegiance only to tradition. " Pictor classicus sum" ("I classical artist"," this convert enthusiastically wrote about himself in Latin. At the height of the artistic revolution, when, having decisively abandoned classical tradition, his brothers were looking for other forms and methods of expression, Chirico, the recognized master of this movement, suddenly turned to the origins. He considered himself free from conventions and fashion trends.

Chirico copies great predecessors: Rubens, Fragonard, Watteau, Tintoretto, Courbet. Now he is an author classic stories: mythological scenes, nudes, still lifes; a copyist who draws centurions, horses, medieval battles, gladiator fights; he is an exotic Orientalist in the Delacroix style. His numerous self-portraits are stunning: either he is in the costume of a bullfighter or a Spanish grandee dressed up for a masquerade, or even completely naked, with saggy cheeks and belly. Chirico obsessively paints lost antiquity, vanished luxury. He rarely reaches the level of the classics, but he persists in this obviously lost bet.

In the last twenty years of his life, Chirico also copies himself - a metaphysician. He's literally parodying own paintings, passing off newly written works as the originals of a past era that glorified him. To puzzling questions, the artist answered that he preferred to rewrite his canvases himself, rather than leaving it to less talented imitators.

Step to the solution

Chirico was unmoved by the accusations addressed to him by his surrealist friends, outraged by his “betrayal,” who had previously enthusiastically accepted his metaphysics. Following Breton, who anathematized the artist, they declared his work decadent, and Chirico himself a “lost genius.” Breton said sarcastically: “He could still be understood if he sought to remember the insights of his lost fire. However, by diligently making copies of his old paintings, he just wants to sell them twice.” Chirico did not remain in debt and he himself fiercely attacked the surrealists, which did not prevent him, despite the war with them, from creating 66 lithographs for Apollinaire’s “Calligrams” in 1930, and a year earlier - the scenery for Diaghilev’s ballet “The Ball”. In turn, Jean Cocteau dedicated an essay to Chirico, and Aragon praised his Autobiography as “an infinitely beautiful thing.” During these years, Chirico wrote articles and even novels, and designed performances.

In 1930, Chirico met in Paris the Russian emigrant Isabella Paxver, who later became his muse and second wife. The first, dancer Raisa Gurevich-Krol, was also from Russia. In 1944, Chirico finally settled in Rome. At the Venice Biennale of 1948, he exhibited exclusively his metaphysical works, and two years later he organized an anti-biennale, where he gathered realist artists. He was elected to the Royal Society of British Painters in London and the French Academy of Arts.

Chirico’s defenders believe: “Even in his so-called “period of decline,” he managed to create several masterpieces, whereas during his brilliant debut he had failures, because regardless of whether he was a pioneer of metaphysics or a copyist of himself, he remained great an artist."

The truest statement seems to be: “In his own way, he was a rebel, because writing in a mannerist manner in 1947 is the same challenge as opening metaphysics to the world in 1910.”

The only exhibition of Giorgio de Chirico in the last quarter of a century at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in the spring of 2009, entitled “Dream Factory,” for the first time showed a complete panorama of his work from 1909 to 1975. This retrospective is a step towards unraveling the Chirico phenomenon. Perhaps the words of Marcel Duchamp will turn out to be prophetic: “By 1926, Chirico abandoned his “metaphysical” concept and turned to freer painting. His fans are not ready to follow him and claim that Chirico of the “second wave” has lost his creative fervor. However, the future will still make its judgment about it.”

"Orpheus - a tired troubadour"

© Giorgio de Chirico

Half physical

Hardly anyone looking at self-portrait by Giorgio de Chirico 1945 , where he depicted himself naked, will say: “What an excellent physical form! Rather: “What a metaphysical form!” De Chirico was always an old man or a prematurely aged child - and remained so all his life. And that is precisely why he was ahead of his time in many ways with his art.

For example, he invented metaphysical painting in Milan in 1909 together with his brother Andrea, who later took the pseudonym Alberto Savinio. He calls his paintings “mysteries” - and the truly deserted squares, the light of the setting sun, and long shadows are reminiscent of the mysterious, frozen atmosphere of mid-August in the Roman district of Eure. The architecture in de Chirico's paintings foreshadows the architecture of the fascist period: rational, emasculated, cold, as if designed to be deserted or to migrate into the equally metaphysical and mysterious films of Michelangelo Antonioni. However, unlike the latter’s films, where time flows, albeit very slowly, in de Chirico’s paintings it seems to have frozen. It is impossible to fall asleep in front of them; moreover, their cold atmosphere gives the viewer a strange feeling of anxiety.

"Afternoon Melancholy"

© Giorgio de Chirico

In fact, metaphysics has little in common with painting. It was invented by the philosopher Aristotle to try to explain to us the world of ideas, not the history of art. De Chirico used this concept only to decide whether a painting could tell about something that cannot be seen - that is, about an idea that exists only in our heads. "Mystery autumn day(1909), depicting Florence looking like Chernobyl a year after the accident, is actually more than just a painting, it is rather a state of mind, a memory, an experience, melancholy or something resembling title page poetry collection Leopardi.

De Chirico preferred to the image real world fictional. He did exactly the same thing in his life: when he didn’t like something about it, he simply pretended that it didn’t exist, or came up with something better. For example, he preferred to date metaphysical painting to 1910, and designated Florence, rather than Milan, as its birthplace. De Chirico did not like Milan, who reminded him of a cheeky girl. But he adored Florence and Turin - two overweight middle-aged gentlemen. He would later find the embodiment of his beloved Florence and Turin, first in the Russian ballerina Raisa Gurevich, whom he married in 1924, and then in Isabella, Isa, another Russian emigrant, whom he met in 1932 and was not separated until the end of his life. Iza was not only his wife, but also his manager and mother, on whom the artist depended as Small child. With her he moved to Rome, to an apartment in Piazza di Spagna, where he lived until his death.

"Afternoon Melancholy"

© Giorgio de Chirico

But before that, de Chirico, like any self-respecting artist of the early twentieth century, went to Paris to meet Picasso and receive his approval, to enter the circle of Apollinaire and the surrealists, poets and artists. In Paris, his works became so iconic that even artists such as Salvador Dali began to imitate them. But when he decided to change his style, he was immediately expelled for betraying the cause of surrealism by the head of the movement, the poet Andre Breton. Who, apparently, was also very dissatisfied with the increased interest of Parisian intellectuals in some Italian.

"Inner Metaphysics with the Head of Mercury"

© Giorgio de Chirico

De Chirico's best works were created in ten years, from 1909 to 1919. Then he really begins to grow old, declaring himself an anti-modernist, thereby, against his will, becoming a harbinger of postmodernism. No one could really explain the meaning of this incomprehensible term, which became very fashionable in the mid-70s - except that it makes it possible to mix little by little different styles, creating works that are not very good taste, kitsch.

Like most artists, de Chirico was understood belatedly: his first exhibition opened in Rome at the Bragaglia Gallery only in 1919. But even the only painting on it was sold, and Roberto Longhi, whose one word in those days decided the fate of the artist, attacked him with criticism. In fact, Longhi was not entirely wrong. Over time, de Chirico’s paintings began to lose their aura of mystery and looked too much like illustrations to the Iliad, sometimes resembling complex heaps.

"Archaeologists"

© Giorgio de Chirico

In 1935, he left for New York, where he experienced enormous success and collaboration with Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. With the outbreak of World War II, he returned to Europe and began to paint self-portraits in the costume of a 17th-century gentleman, thus entering his “baroque” period and thereby demonstrating either an extraordinary sense of humor or early signs of dementia. Then, at the prompting of his wife, the artist gets into the bad habit of putting false dates on his paintings, eventually confusing everyone, including himself, and ceasing to distinguish fakes from originals. Whether he became a senile or a swindler, we will never know, but when he came across his own painting, which he no longer liked, he wrote “Fake” on it - in order to avoid misunderstandings and thereby
seriously disrupting the market.

But time is still generous, and in the 60s and 70s, despite the appeal on the market large quantity fakes with his signature, our great artist begins to receive attention, honors, recognition.

It is exhibited in prestigious museums. He again begins to write in the newly fashionable style of metaphysics and create terrible bronze sculptures - a mandatory stage for everyone famous artists his generation. Having lost the depth inherent in mystery and the rebellious spirit of youth, de Chirico discovers the serenity of old age and the simple joy of composing puzzles and charades. Therefore painting recent years More of a rebus than a riddle. Many artists of subsequent generations will be inspired by his works, including the trans-avant-garde artist Sandro Chia. And even Fumito Ueda, the creator of the PlayStation 2, paid tribute to de Chirico with his best-selling games Ico and Shadow of Colossus.

Reclusive, playing himself, the only character from the history of art, Giorgio de Chirico died on November 20, 1978 at the age of ninety. By this time, its metaphysical squares will no longer be deserted: they will be filled with students and mobile police. Instead of a light western breeze, a leaden heaviness thickened. In times of revolutionary upsurge, no one needs either the timeless thoughtfulness of Giorgio de Chirico's architecture or his mannequins.

The founding father of surrealism is rightfully considered to be Salvador, our great, Dali, and many, with a fleeting mention of this artistic movement, will instantly remember a couple of paintings by the picturesque Spaniard. However, experienced art critics, if they are also arrogant, will spit in your face the name of the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico.

Long before the paintings officially called surre were created, he had already crossed the metaphysical line of the reality of what was depicted. In the years when Dali was just getting acquainted with modern art, De Chirico had already written a series of his most famous works: “Nostalgia for Infinity” (1911), “Melancholy and the Mystery of the Street” (1914), “Nostalgia of a Poet” (1914), “Metaphysical Interior” (1917). Then, having no analogues of description, his paintings would be called “metaphysical painting,” but now we clearly understand that these were those first embryos of surrealism - unreal, logical, absurd and mysterious.

"Turin Spring"

The avant-garde defies rational analysis, description and understanding at all. This is a space that is on the edge - in these paintings there are only a small number of elements that bring the overall composition out of a state of static and rest. De Chirico very often plays with shadows and perspective, deliberately breaking it in certain places, which only somewhere on a subconscious level gives us a feeling of the unreality of what is happening. For example, in the painting “Melancholy and the Mystery of the Street,” the silhouette of a running girl is deliberately distorted, and therefore more reminiscent of some kind of retreating and blurring shadow. In this case, it is not clear what it is - an object or a shadow reflected from it. Then the direction of this shadow is not clear, because the light is directed in the other direction. The first visual tricks and riddles, which Magritte and Dali would later come to, began in such seemingly elusive little details in de Chirico’s paintings.

"Melancholy and the Mystery of the Street"

This whole phrase completely determines the mood of our story. Yes, he was great, he created a revolution in painting, but in all this, the main word is “was”. No matter how it may sound, de Chirico died too late. The peak of his creativity falls in the second decade of the twentieth century, when in 1911 he moved from his native Volos to Paris. Here, truly, the real de Chirico is born - uncompromising, revolutionary, breaking logic in the head of everyone who dared to look at his paintings.

"Two Masks"

"The Great Metaphysician"

"Melancholy of Departure"

"The Conquest of the Philosopher"

But, after the First World War, something clicked in his mind, a protracted crisis and some kind of total depression ensued. And if Picasso resolved their suicidal moods solemnly and in the “blue period,” then de Chirico did not succeed. At first, he simply copied his own paintings, pushing them like stray sausages on the shelves that no one wanted to taste, passing each of them off as authentic. And then something completely irreparable happened - he was completely exhausted and began to promote academism as the only true religion, simultaneously throwing mud at modern Art, the founder of which was literally a couple of decades ago. Sad, sad and very tough, but such is life.

Once, already in the 60s, Boris Messerer, at that time a theater decorator in the USSR, visited Giorgio de Chirico in Rome. He so wanted to see that very “metaphysical” that he was simply killed by what he saw. From Messerer's memories of the meeting:

“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.”

De Chirico’s wife was a translator at this meeting; she was asked where “those” paintings by Giorgio were, but she stubbornly pointed fingers at academic boredom, saying that he was a true artist.

“Suddenly Signor de Chirico goes off 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-gardeism.”

"Still life with silverware"

Giorgio de Chirico lived to be 90 years old and into old age, embracing his social life. realistic dry wife, with his banal classicist paintings in golden pompous frames, went into another world. Whether he regretted that he renounced his discovery or was satisfied with the measured life of a simple imitator, we, fortunately, will never know. After all, both fates are sad.