Giorgio De Chirico's continuing metaphysics on display in Conegliano

Entitled Giorgio de Chirico. Metaphysics Continues the exhibition with which Palazzo Sarcinelli in Conegliano (Treviso), from Oct. 11, 2023 to Feb. 25, 2024, anticipates the centennial celebrations of Surrealism (1924-2024), a movement of which De Chirico was elected, unbeknownst to him, founder André Breton. For him, as for other Surrealists such as Max Ernst, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dali, De Chirico’s early metaphysical painting (1910-1918) played a key role in the birth and development of the movement from the early 1920s onward.

The exhibition, curated by Victoria Noel-Johnson, is organized by Daniel Buso and Elena Zannoni’s ARTIKA, in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio and Isa de Chirico and the City of Conegliano.

On view are 71 of the artist’s works, and among them is an important selection of De Chirico’s major subjects, including Faceless Mannequins and Troubadours, Italian Piazzas and Towers, Ferrara Interiors, Trophies, Gladiators, Archaeologists, Lit and Dull Suns and Mysterious Bathers ( Mythologie series of 1934).

The exhibition reserves an extensive focus on the Neo-Metaphysical season (c. 1965-1978), of which La Fondazione de Chirico has the most important and comprehensive collection in the world, in which the artist returns to elaborate the themes that populated the works of the early Metaphysical period (1910-1918). In addition to presenting the best-known motifs, selected loans will highlight the range of techniques in which the master engaged: painting, drawing, watercolor, sculpture and lithography. As now widely acknowledged by current critics, all of these works can be considered metaphysical, as they are underpinned by De Chirico’s abiding interest in the two Nietzschean concepts of eternal return and Apollonian-Dionysian dualism.

Considered one of the major figures in early twentieth-century art, De Chirico profoundly influenced not only Surrealism, but also a number of wide-ranging movements, including Dadaism, magic realism, Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity), pop art, transavantgarde, and some aspects of postmodernism. A major contributor to this was the artist’s constant willingness to experiment, who in his seventy-year career (c. 1908-1978) never ceased to develop different styles, techniques, subjects and colors, not unlike his peer and friend Picasso. The seemingly paradoxical nature of de Chirico’s work is, precisely, what makes it even today-more than a century after the discovery of Metaphysical Art-so fresh and relevant to modern artists and audiences.

First promoted in 1913 by Apollinaire and Picasso (the two great mediators between modernism and tradition), de Chirico’s early paintings intoned a “new song” that fascinated and, in part, galvanized the Parisian avant-garde of the 1910s, followed by the Surrealists in the 1920s.

“By devising a pictorial system of mathematical precision that distorts reality (through the illogical use of perspective and light, combined with the irrational juxtaposition of ordinary and fantastic objects in altered and unusual settings), the artist produces scenes of enigmatic isolation or disturbing constraint,” points out Victoria Noel-Johnson, who is the exhibition’s curator. “Imbued with an anguished foreboding, the atmosphere (or Stimmung, according to the nineteenth-century German philosopher Nietzsche) of his painting aims to arouse a sense of surprise, discovery and revelation.”

Mayor Fabio Chies says, “A special exhibition dedicated to an artist who dedicated his life to art. Hosting the exhibition at Palazzo Sarcinelli is an important occasion, an opportunity for the people of Conegliano and the many tourists. Immersing oneself in the world of Giorgio de Chirico and being seduced by the fascination of his images will open an important cultural season. Thanks to ARTIKA for organizing the exhibition and for the enhancement and dissemination of culture in our municipality.”

Image: Giorgio De Chirico, The Disquieting Muses, detail (1974; oil on canvas, 50 x 65 cm; Giorgio and Isa de Chirico Foundation)

Giorgio De Chirico's continuing metaphysics on display in Conegliano

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