Major exhibition on Giorgio De Chirico in Pisa traces his art with all the masterpieces

Palazzo Blu in Pisa is hosting a major exhibition on Giorgio De Chirico (Volos, 1888 - Rome, 1978): titled De Chirico and Metaphysical Art, the exhibition, on view from Nov. 7, 2020 to May 9, 2021, and curated by Saretto Cincinelli and Lorenzo Canova, traces the ever-evolving research of the artist, the father of Metaphysics. De Chirico, after giving birth to Metaphysical Art in 1910, constantly returned to its source, giving birth, in different periods, to the seasons of the so-called “second Metaphysics” and “Neometaphysics.” And it is especially on these seasons, which have long been underestimated (due to the prejudice fed by André Breton, according to whom an unhappy and precocious senescence affected the artist after his early, brilliant Metaphysical works), that the exhibition intends to focus. The interpretation conditioned by Breton, after enduring for a long period even in Italy, entered a crisis in the early 1970s, when a major retrospective of de Chirico’s work at Palazzo Reale in Milan marked a significant shift in the critical reception of his work. Thus began a series of authoritative new interpretations and critical revisions, aimed at untangling the figure of de Chirico from the internationally recognized role of precursor of Surrealism: a prestigious but decidedly circumscribed and reductive role, which aimed at recognizing only a narrow part of his production.

But the Pisa exhibition aims to recount De Chirico’s entire career by investigating every aspect of it. One of the main elements of the project is the discovery of the artist’s personal collection, of the “de Chirico’s de Chirico’s” that are the focus of this exhibition, composed mainly of a large number of works from La Galleria Nazionale in Rome, donated in 1987 by the painter’s wife, Isabella, and from the Giorgio and Isa de Chirico Foundation. Also thanks to the support of national modern art institutions such as the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART), the project presents a series of the artist’s well-known masterpieces at Palazzo Blu. The path follows a chronological iter that traverses de Chirico’s work in all its development, phases and thematic nodes: thus ranging from the early “Böcklinesque” works of the end of the first decade of the twentieth century to the 1910s of the great Metaphysical painting; from the masterpieces of the “classical” period of the early 1920s of the “second metaphysical” Paris, to the Mysterious Baths of the 1930s, to the extraordinary research on the painting of the great masters of the past found in the still lifes, nudes and self-portraits, made between the 1930s and the 1950s, arriving at the last, luminous neo-Metaphysical phase that has recently attracted great international interest.

De Chirico imagines views of ancient cities superimposed on visions of modern cities taken from places of lived life, first Volos and Athens, then Munich, Milan, Florence, Turin, Paris, Ferrara, New York, Venice, Rome. These are places where the public space uninhabited by man is populated by objects (fragments, ruins, arches, arcades, street corners, walls, buildings, towers, chimneys, trains, statues, mannequins) that estranged from their usual context emerge with all their iconic force becoming unreal, mysterious, enigmatic. A powerful example is found in the painting The Disquieting Muses, where de Chirico forever fixes a conception of the world and of the relationship between man and reality. The world, through the metaphor of the city of Ferrara, is a set of things dominated by an illogical fatality, an absurd mystery guarded by strict controllers that only poetic intuition can penetrate.

The exhibition, with the intention of reaffirming the overcoming of the idea of a de Chirico as a genius only in the short period from 1910 to 1923, wants to reread the entire development of his long research through the rooms of a sort of ideal museum, which from the classical-romantic beginnings, inspired by Böcklin and Klinger, leads to metaphysical painting, and from the “neo-baroque” period of the postwar period to the revisiting of himself and the new inspirations of Neometaphysics. In this progression, the Metaphysical period also takes on a more organic significance than the rest of his career, and it becomes perfectly coherent to speak, as Maurizio Calvesi has repeatedly done, of a “continuous Metaphysics.” This is the context for the great interest that, starting in the 1960s, de Chirico’s work has enjoyed among younger generations of artists. The quotations and tributes that, in different ways, authors of the caliber of Giulio Paolini and Andy Warhol have dedicated to the artist seem to corroborate a new and more conceptual vision of his entire oeuvre, recognizing in the self-referentiality of his research a subdued and rigorous programmatic component and a premeditated design of poetics.

Finally, the exhibition also wants to shed light on what we can now consider the dissemination of the metaphysical vision, which, invented by de Chirico in 1910, later brought international flourishes that we find in the branches of great artists such as Carrà, Savinio and de Pisis, but also Sironi and Martini. These artists, present in the exhibition thanks to a number of loans, rather than forming a school or a movement, were able to absorb and rework in a personal way the powerful influence of de Chirico who, by the mid-1910s, had already produced masterpieces that were fundamental to twentieth-century art, such as, for example, the Italian Squares, The Song of Love (1914) or The Vaticaninator (1915).

Organized by the Pisa Foundation together with MondoMostre, with the collaboration of the Giorgio and Isa de Chirico Foundation and La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, the exhibition is under the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, the Region of Tuscany and the City of Pisa. The exhibition catalog is published by Skira Editore.

Hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Wednesdays for organized audiences only), Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Tickets: full 12 euros, reduced groups (minimum 8 maximum 13 people) 10 euros, young people from 6 to 17 years 6 euros, university students (Thursday only) 5 euros. Reservations required for all at 02-92897755 (for individuals) and 02-92897793 (for groups). Call center hours: Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. For info visit the Palazzo Blu website.

Image: Giorgio De Chirico, Le muse inquietanti, detail (1925 [1947]; oil on canvas, 97 x 67 cm; Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) © Giorgio De Chirico by SIAE 2020

Major exhibition on Giorgio De Chirico in Pisa traces his art with all the masterpieces

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