Journey inside De Chirico 1 part

Journey inside De Chirico 1 part
 
I warmly thank here my students of the 4O from the high school "A.Roiti", Ferrara, who gave me the opportunity to explore this fascinating artist, in occasion of the exhibition held in our Palazzo dei Diamanti.

Anyone who has seen, at least once, the powerful shape, such an imposing, square shape, of our Castello Estense emerging from the milky fog of a November day, perhaps can understand why Ferrara, our city, has been so fundamental in giving Giorgio De Chirico some of the most creative years of his life. In fact, those that the painter spent here, from 1915 to 1919, during the First World War, are also the central years for forming his "metaphysical" art. Metaphysical painting starts properly in 1913, but here he completed his most famous masterpieces (one for all: Hector and Andromache, 1917, see below); the exhibition at Palazzo dei Diamanti is dedicated just to this period.



Perhaps, the metaphysical painting is inscribed on the renaissance stones of our city, maybe it is hidden in the castle or in the square shapes of the Palazzo dei Diamanti, or in the prospects of the '"Herculean Addition', the Renaissance district added to the city by Ercole I d'Este and designed by Biagio Rossetti at the end of the fifteenth century: it seems to exude from the cobblestones of Via delle Volte or from the long perspective of Corso Ercole I. That's why Ferrara is the ideal starting point of this trip that I propose here, a slightly alternative one, "inside" De Chirico's paintings: just "inside", that is, as if you were in his paintings and you could look around. It starts from Ferrara and arrives .... who knows where, to the infinite. Maybe I will not follow a chronological order, perhaps I'll rather not follow any order at all: I will lead you with me, with the help of news, testimonies and documents about the artist, through the imagination and thirst for the absolute of this painter who, like no other, felt what is '' beyond '.

Departure: Ferrara
 
Our Ferrarese writer Roberto Pazzi adfirms that Ferrara is the only geographic point in Italy where, looking at the horizon, the eye is not stopped by any obstacle, any sea or mountain or hill. And this provides a sense of infinity, like the Russian or American great plains, where the eye can get lost toward the horizon. One is reminded of the opening words of Foster Wallace's book Tennis, TV, trigonometry, tornadoes (and other fun things that I will never do again), where he, who came from the countryside of Illinois, says that at his university in Massachusetts he got interested in mathematics for  a"cathartic evocation of homesickness": in fact he had grown uo"among vectors, lines, lines that intersect straight lines, grids - and, at the horizon, the large lines curved by the forces of nature". The boundless plains inspire the idea of ​​the infinite and the infinite is here at home, with the Po flowing majestically to the north of the city, the plain and the fantasies of Ariosto, which could go on indefinitely with wizards and knights. But the plains also inspired an inescapable attraction for geometry.Geometry and dream form a combination by which you could sum up the art by De Chirico. Metaphysical painting, which, as its name implies, looks to what is beyond the physical universe, is fed by what surpasses daily rationality, then, as the contemporary surrealism, also by what comes from the unconscious and dreams; moreover, the dream was already very present in the symbolism, the great art movement of the late nineteenth century breaking with the hitherto prevailing rationalism and in whose waters metaphysical painting and surrealism bathe their roots. And among the endless lines crossing our plains, there is place for that too (I mentioned before, not surprisingly, Ariosto, with that endless source of dreams which is his poem, Orlando Furioso), as if at one end we could put the very rational geometry, which organizes the spaces rigorously, on the other side a fantastic evasion, with flights on winged horses like the Hippogriff. Ferrara, after all, is like that: and nothing like our fog, when it swallows our streets, seems to lead to infinity, resulting in dreams and visions.
Geometry dominates in this picture, The disquieting muses, of 1910-20, then repeated in 1960 and dating from the period spent in Ferrara. Here you see a square, crossed by lines converging toward a vanishing point, as sides of tiles of an imaginary Renaissance square, structured according to the most rigorous perspective of the fifteenth century: the square is half in shadow and, around the vanishing point, there stands the perfectly geometric building, almost a box surrounded by towers, of the castle. To the right, a building in the shade with a hint of a porch and a statue, to the left, strange interference, the modern chimneys of a factory. In the foreground, two strange statues, halfway between the Doric column and the greek archaic marble, with something looking like geometric solids: they are two muses, but look like two dummies (therefore they are "disturbing"), as saying that nowadays artistic inspiration is not linear and serene, but moves between different realities, between tradition and modern restlessness; and many of these realities escape the artist.Ferrara well trained inhabitants will reckognize what seems the metaphysical version of the square outside the castle and the beginning of Viale Cavour: as if the artist had seen our center transfigured by a psychic vision. There's even the chimney (inhabitants will certainly think of the industrial North of Ferrara). And as if the geometry of the town had been seen in a dream, in fact (or in a nightmare?). But where does this vision come from?
De Chirico before Ferrara
Few artists as De Chirico put the journey so much to the center of their lives: an intense life, made of meetings, contacts with many people and diverse stays in stunning and evocative, or dynamic and stimulating locations, including Greece, Germany, amazing Italian cities such as Florence, Rome and Ferrara, and Paris. Well-educated, multilingual (the painter spoke Greek, Italian, German, French and other languages), always moving between many cultural trends, De Chirico fitted the sparkling atmosphere of the Paris of the 20s (the one masterfully represented by W.Allen in Midnight in Paris).Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio De Chirico was born on 10 July 1888 in Greece, to be precise in Thessaly, in Volos (we will return here), from Palermo engineer, Evaristo, employed in the costruction of local railways, and Gemma, from a Genoese, aristocratic family; when his father died, in 1905, the family (which also included other brothers, like Andrea, later known as Alberto Savinio, poet and writer) moved to Monaco of Bavaria, where the young man, after attending the University of Athens, continued his studies at the local Academy. He said that during his teens he studied mostly with private tutors, that he was self-taught; but in Athens before, then in Monaco, he had an encounter with great art. Then our journey goes on to a new stage: Monaco of Bavaria ... and the Isle of the Dead.