Giorgio de Chirico’s Century

Rediscovering Giorgio de Chirico nearly thirty years after his death (which took place on 20 November 1978). Delving into the intricacies of his complex and sometimes hermetic paintings. Finally stripping off the conservative vestments in which he has often been dressed up. Following him in his bold stylistic variations and audacious linguistic acrobatics. And revealing the identity of an artist endowed with a precarious, elusive personality, capable of assuming many masks. He lets himself become caught up in a tangle of felicitous contradictions and avoids any rigid consistency, accommodating attitudes and tensions within himself. Delineated before us we see the profile of a painter whom Jean Cocteau described as a killer skilled at first reassuring his victim and then stabbing him in the back. A betrayer who recalls distant memories but is also in contact with avant-garde experiments. Who returns to far-off recollections and at the same time impacts powerfully on the methods and strategies of contemporary sensibility. This pressing immediacy emerges particularly when one examines his dialogue with the area of architecture. De Chirico, an expert upholder of the art of composing (and dismantling) forms, draws on a vast archive of archetypes made up of solid figures such as town squares, towers, arches and columns. And also lyrical motifs such as shadows, empty spaces, silences and violated perspectives. An alphabet which is subjected to unexpected alterations and alienating games. It is a syllabary which influenced significant areas of design effort in the twentieth century, in ways not always evident. From the time of the rappel à l’ordre to the phases of Postmodernism. From the supporters of a return to austere monumentality to the protagonists of deconstructionism, and from the creators of the cities of silence in the Fascist era to the prophets of drawn architecture, free from obligations and duties. These atmospheres pervade Giorgio de Chirico’s Century. An exhibition which is offered as a kind of visual novel divided into three chapters. The first – “De Chirico and architecture” – explores the presence of certain stylistic features of construction in De Chirico’s paintings. The second – “Architecture and De Chirico” – dwells on the reflections and echoes aroused by the work of the Pictor Optimus in the poetics of designers of various tendencies, from the twenties to the present day. The third and final chapter features Gabriele Basilico’s photographic journey in various parts of Italy which are rich in metaphysical traces and assonances. We leaf through the pages of a story told in pictures, with signs and inferences, clues and indications, bringing to light the secrets of an untold tale. Yet the enigma remains. The great killer continues to fascinate and bewilder us. He still wounds us.