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Metaphysical painting. Metaphysical painting ( Italian: pittura metafisica) or metaphysical art was a style of painting developed by the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began in 1910 with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious ...
- Summary of Metaphysical Painting
- Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- Beginnings of Metaphysical Painting
- Concepts and Styles
- Later Developments - After Metaphysical Painting
In 1910, the Italian Giorgio de Chirico began to spearhead a new style of painting, inspired by those enigmatic moments of our lives when ordinary awareness becomes suspended and we feel as if we've stepped out of time. After meeting artist Carlo Carrà, the two evolved this type of work into a movement coined "Pittura Metafisica" or Metaphysical Pa...
In direct opposition to the progressive avant-garde of the early 20thcentury, Metaphysical Paintings featured a general mood of isolation and haunting mystery. In these fantastical worlds of the ar...Metaphysical Painting was marked by the widely adopted inclusion of common motifs from everyday life such as statues, mannequins, fish, mirrors, and geometrical objects, only positioned within unor...In de Chirico's words, the Metaphysical painters were "painting that which could not be seen." This allusion to what lies beneath the conscious level of everyday life would attract the eye of the t...Although short lived, the Metaphysical Painting movement was also a forebear to the Interwar Classicism movement, which was an artistic reaction to the emotional fallout of World War I. It called f...Giorgio de Chirico
In 1912, preparing for his exhibition at the 1913 Salon d'Automne, Giorgio de Chirico described the genesis of his Metaphysical Painting, Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon(1910). "One clear autumnal afternoon I was sitting on a bench in the middle of the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. It was of course not the first time I had seen this square. I had just come out of a long and painful intestinal illness, and I was in a nearly morbid state of sensitivity. The whole world, down to the marble of th...
Guillaume Apollinaire
In 1911 de Chirico moved to Paris and, as art historian James Thall Soby noted, "almost immediately attracted the attention of many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the day, notably Guillaume Apollinaire." The critic Apollinaire praised what he called "the metaphysical landscapes of M. de Chirico," and added, "the painter uses that most modern recourse - surprise." While Apollinaire's praise made de Chirico famous among the Parisian avant-garde, it was the acclaim of the artist...
Carlo Carrà
When World War I broke out, both de Chirico and his younger brother Alberto Savino returned to Italy to enlist. In 1917, while convalescing in a military hospital in Ferrara, the two met Carlo Carrà and Filippo de Pisis. De Chirico and Carrà began working closely together as they founded Metaphysical Painting. Carrà, who had been a cofounder and leading member of Italian Futurism, had begun searching for a new artistic direction around 1915, studying the works of 14thcentury Italian masters....
Iconography
De Chirico developed his own iconography, using a number of everyday objects: fish, statues, mannequins, mirrors, and architectural elements in startling juxtapositions to create a sense of ambiguity and mystery. These motifs were widely adopted by all of the Metaphysical painters. De Chirico strove to differentiate his motifs from their established cultural associations, as he wrote, "all symbols must be put aside. Thought must so detach itself from all usual logical and sense, must so remov...
Still Life
In Metaphysical Painting, still life took on the role of creating unexpected juxtapositions as seen in de Chirico's The Philosopher's Conquest (1914) where two large artichokes are placed next to the muzzle of a cannon surrounded by cannonballs within an Italian square. As de Chirico wrote, "The absolute realization of the space that any object should occupy in a picture and of the space that separates the various objects, establishes a new astronomy of all things which are bound to the plane...
Portraiture
Portraiture was not a primary focus of Metaphysical Painting, yet works like de Chirico's Premonitory portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire (1914) had an influential impact. Depicting the figure realistically, the portraits also contained unusual juxtapositions, like the marble column with a large plaster mold of a fish and a shell framing Apollinaire, and a shadow profile above him with a target-like design on his forehead. As a result, the works evolved mere portraiture to a new level in which...
In the early 1920s Italy, Morandi, Carrà, and Sironi abandoned the metaphysical approach in favor of the realism of the Novecento Italiano movement. At the same time, de Chirico returned to Paris where, influenced by the classical masters, he turned toward realism and abandoned his metaphysical approach. However, his work had become a major influen...
Giorgio Morandi. Metaphysical painting, style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 in the works of the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. These painters used representational but incongruous imagery to produce disquieting effects on the viewer. Their work strongly influenced the Surrealists in the 1920s.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Metaphysical Art is the translation of the Italian Pittura Metafisica, a movement created by Giorgio de Chirico and the former futurist, Carlo Carra, in the north Italian city of Ferrara. Using a realist style, they painted the squares typical of such Italian cities but the squares are unnaturally empty, and in them objects and statues are ...
Sep 5, 2023 · At the core of metaphysical art lies a profound manipulation of perspective and space, a hallmark technique that challenges the viewer’s perception of reality. Objects are rendered in distorted proportions, architecture is juxtaposed in surreal arrangements, and dimensions are skewed to evoke an otherworldly sense of depth.
Art movement. Metaphysical art (Italian: Pittura metafisica) was a style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 in the works of the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious ...
Metaphysical Art (from the Italian Pittura Metafisica) is an art movement that evolved in Italy at the beginning of the 20 th century. The metaphysical painting is characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of unusual elements. They create oneiric and transcendent atmospheres while maintaining a realist style.
