0320 "Rappresentarsi tutto come enigma"

Giorgio de Chirico e la ritrattistica degli anni Dieci

Abstract

Between 1910 and 1920, Giorgio de Chirico broke with the traditional conventions of painting in order to visualize Friedrich Nietzsche’s concepts of the meaninglessness of existence, appearance and the subjectivity of reality, without, however, abandoning figuration. According to de Chirico, the new art had to free itself from the anthropocentrism that had determined its course, to "see everything, even man, as a thing". The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and how the concept of the meaningless and the enigma of life are also thematised and expressed in de Chirico’s portraiture of the 1910s. The hypothesis is that the artist deliberately undermines the generally agreed principle of pictorial illusion. By thematizing the material support, he reveals its seemingly real appearance as fictitious and thus creates an irresolvable visible paradox, as in the Piazze d’Italia and the Metaphysical Interiors of the same period.