Melancholy as a Way of Life (Metaphysical Painting – 105)

Abstract

Metaphysical Painting (Italian “Pittura Metafisica“) originated with the painter Giorgio de Chirico in Italy during the First World War. Metaphysics (Greek “Meta ta physika’ – “beyond physics”) is the method of thinking which considers phenomena separately from each other, as the ones given once and forever. Strange stories, transformed reality suspended in coziness and immobility, images of the mysterious world existing beyond the limits of reality – all of these are the subjects of Metaphysical painting.

In 1915 Italy entered into the World War and de Chirico was enlisted into the Italian army. In 1917 he made friends with the painter Carlo Carrà, one of the founders of Futurism, at the hospital of Ferrara. On the basis of the creative ideas shared by the two painters the scuola metafisica (“Metaphysical school”) was established, the magazine “Valori Plastici“ (“plastic values“), in which the conception of the movement and the main concepts of the Metaphysical poetics – “irony“ and “ephemerality“ were formulated, was founded. The movement was joined by de Chirico’s younger brother Andrea, known by the pseudonym Alberto Savinio, Giorgio Morandi, Filippo de Pisis.

Peace and immobility reign in the enigmatic, deserted paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. Rough, voluminous, simplified forms, distinct colours, cold illumination, sharp shadows are the main pictorial devices used by the painter. This alienated environment “is settled” with lifeless mannequins and plaster casts in which the painter tries to find the reflection of some unreachable, “supersensible” world and establishes eternal aesthetic ideal of existence.

Carlo Carrà’s paintings of the “Metaphysical period” are marked by iconographic images – mannequin like figures, plaster heads, geographical maps and different geometrical objects characteristic of the movement, Futurist speed and noise are replaced by “attractive silence of forms” here.

Giorgio Morandi creates original compositions in which strange objects appear to be embodied in airless, isolated space and exist in a state of levitation. In the works of the “Metaphysical” period the artist reveals an archetypal structure of objects, studies qualities of stereometric objects in space and creates isolated, conditional environment, which is left beyond objective reality.

The development of the Metaphysical Painting proved to be short-lived. However, soon some of its general principles were revived in the realm of the new powerful movement – Surrealism. The works by the painters belonging to the group assumed significance beyond the scope of the movement, which clearly reflected tendencies characteristic of the Italian art in the first half of the 20th century.