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The Red
Tower
1913
Oil on canvas
73.5 x 100.5 cm
76.2553 PG 64 |
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Giorgio
de Chirico’s enigmatic works of 1911-17
provided a crucial inspiration for the Surrealist painters.
The dreamlike atmosphere of his compositions results
from irrational perspective, the lack of a unified light
source, the elongation of shadows, and a hallucinatory
focus on objects. Italian piazzas bounded by arcades
or classical façades are transformed into ominously
silent and vacant settings for invisible dramas. The
absence of event provokes a nostalgic or melancholy
mood if one senses the wake of a momentous incident;
if one feels the imminence of an act, a feeling of anxiety
ensues. De Chirico remarked that “every object
has two appearances: one, the current one, which we
nearly always see and which is seen by people in general;
the other, a spectral or metaphysical appearance beheld
only by some individuals in moments of clairvoyance
and metaphysical abstraction, as in the case of certain
bodies concealed by substances impenetrable by sunlight
yet discernible, for instance, by x-ray or other powerful
artificial means”. Traces of concealed human presences
appear in the fraught expanse of this work. One is the
partly concealed equestrian monument often identified
as the statue of King Carlo Alberto in Turin.
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