Giorgio de Chirico July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978) was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father.
De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were still cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like hybrid figures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_de_Chirico
de Chirico wrote: “To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream.”
• From 'On mystery and Creation', Giorgio de Chirico, Paris 1913, as quoted in "Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough", Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p . 231 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Giorgio_de_Chirico
I’m sure many of you know the work of de Chirico. He is well known as a Surrealist painter. I choose his figurative works to pair tonight with my faceless photo portrait. My photo was a glass panel in a garage door, spotted while driving through the back alleys of a Pennsylvania coal town. Whether it was meant to depict a human head I don’t know. I picked de Chirico figures, because many of his works also depict faceless anonymous people. His early work focuses on imaginary architecture, but after looking at his later work I noticed how many of them include egg shaped heads devoid of human features. I’ve linked a few here.
“Masks”
http://en.wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/Opra/BRUE-8EWHD3
http://fsjsp6.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/giorgio-de-chirico-canzone-meridionale-33530.jpg
http://www.italiantourism.com/newsletters/1175788417b.jpg
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/2007/10/21/the_archeaologists.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__ZuMrcfbX8w/S-cWa4ga37I/AAAAAAAAASQ/ib0EGunrO74/s1600/DeChirico.jpg
I hope your enjoying my group of works honoring some of the artists I enjoy. Please know that I’m not trying to be preachy, but that I’m personally enjoying the challenge of linking my pictures to other, somehow related artistic images. I’m finding that this exercise really helps me rediscover my artistic roots and learn many new things in the process. If I make far-fetched pairings its just part of the inherent learning curve, as this is by no means a serious scholarly endeavor. Please let me know what you think, and thanks for looking.
G
