Long shadows projected on deserted pavements, noble arches with a perfect geometric symmetry, streets and courtyards immersed in an unnatural, subtly ghostly solitude: these are the features, now universally recognisable, that characterize Giorgio de Chirico’s famous “Piazze d’Italia” (Italian squares), now at Repetto Gallery’s exhibition spaces, in Lugano, until 16 December 2023. For the first time in Ticino, the father of Metaphysical painting develops an intense exhibition interplay with some of the most influential and recognized artistic personalities of the 20th century, from the serigraphs by Andy Warhol to the enamelled canvases by Mario Schifano, until the reference to classicism by Giulio Paolini and the suspended atmospheres captured by Luigi Ghirri, then reaching the clear landscapes by Salvo. Forty-five years after the anniversary of Pictor Optimus’s death, the gallery celebrates the uninterrupted mastery of his research and the uniqueness of his vision of a so changeable and multifaceted world.
Giorgio de Chirico, nello specchio del Novecento. Warhol, Schifano, Paolini, Ghirri, Salvo, exhibition view, Repetto Gallery, Lugano, 2023. Ph. Daniele de Lonti, courtesy Repetto Gallery
Through 18 paintings and 10 drawings, some of the most significant historical works of his pictorial and poetic excursus emerge in this retrospective, such as the large oil “La commedia e la tragedia”, 1926, the enigmatic “Cabine misteriose”, 1935, paintings depicting many horses, and the aforementioned “Piazze d’Italia”, from the 1940s and 1950s. In an imaginary journey at the discovery of de Chirico’s works, the landscapes and his metaphysical atmospheres represent the artist’s mature phase, perhaps the best known and appreciated by the public. The assiduous search for the enigma is accompanied by a fascination for the Symbolism pictorial grammar – taken up by artists such as Arnold Böcklin, Max Klinger and James Ensor – which represents one of the elements from which de Chirico will draw with great dedication. Just as his successors will be profitably inspired by his own material, de Chirico himself also fits into a climate of exchanges and transfers, tense in the conflict between antiquity and modernity, between the burnt panoramas of a Hellenic city and the cosmopolitan spheres of Munich, Paris and Rome.
Giorgio de Chirico, nello specchio del Novecento. Warhol, Schifano, Paolini, Ghirri, Salvo, exhibition view, Repetto Gallery, Lugano, 2023. Ph. Daniele de Lonti, courtesy Repetto Gallery
We thus retrace, from the metaphysical period to the Baroque, a creative path that is anything but monolithic, which refutes the idea of an artistic career developed chronologically, which instead highlights de Chirico’s aptitude to perfect the themes and motifs of his oeuvre. He is «…the survivor and the unborn», as the words on the wall that welcomes the viewers asserts as soon as they cross the threshold of the gallery. A prophetic, solemn and numinous expression, extrapolated from the lyrical prose “Villeggiatura”, dated “Villa Seminario, May 1917”, which de Chirico dedicated «to Carlo Carrà the seven floors painter» and published in the Roman periodical Cronache letterarie in August 1917.
Giorgio de Chirico, nello specchio del Novecento. Warhol, Schifano, Paolini, Ghirri, Salvo, exhibition view, Repetto Gallery, Lugano, 2023. Ph. Daniele de Lonti, courtesy Repetto Gallery
Simultaneously heir and source of creations, de Chirico shows himself as already aware of the role he would play: his importance could not be exhausted only in the role of witness – isolated at that time – but rather was part of a future to be renewed. A new light is thus shed on the fundamental legacy accepted by his successors, as perceptively traced in the critical text by Andrea Cortellessa, which accompanies the show: «The extraordinary fortune that his painting encountered among the artists who came after him is an integral part of this metaphysical future. And it is symptomatic of the polymorphous plurality of Monomachus that the many artists who looked at him, did so by following unpredictable and extremely different directions». Warhol, Schifano, Paolini, Ghirri, Salvo are precisely the famous followers who, influenced by the magnetic gaze of his imagery, have reworked de Chirico’s archetypes in pieces that are tense amid suspensions, dreamlike symbols and allegorical images. An admiration for the great painting of the past that is expressed in multiple trends and nuances, to attempt to trace back to that original moment preserved by the work, amplifying its echoes in the years to come.
Giorgio de Chirico, nello specchio del Novecento. Warhol, Schifano, Paolini, Ghirri, Salvo, exhibition view, Repetto Gallery, Lugano, 2023. Ph. Daniele de Lonti, courtesy Repetto Gallery
Next 16th December, on the occasion of the finissage of the exhibition, the gallery spaces will host the special screening of “Ritratti – L’impossibile conversazione del Signor de Chirico”, an archive reportage from 1970 with Giorgio de Chirico interviewed by journalist Giorgio Soavi, courtesy of RSI Swiss Radio and Television.
Elena Marcon
Info:
Various artists, Giorgio de Chirico, nello specchio del Novecento. Warhol, Schifano, Paolini, Ghirri, Salvo
25/09/2023 – 16/12/2023
Repetto Gallery
via Clemente Maraini 24, 6900 Lugano
repettogallery.ch
is a contemporary art magazine since 1980
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