De Chirico, Giorgio

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DRAWING from the MODERN

Drawing From The Modern
Andre Breton , Paul Gauguin , Georges Bataille , Jodi Hauptman , Hans Bellmer , Constantin Brancusi , Paul Cezanne , Marc Chagall , Giorgio De Chirico , Robert Delaunay , Andre Derain , Arthur Dove , Alexandra Alexandrovna Exter , Arshile Gorky , Juan Gris , Gustav Klimt , Wilfredo Lam , Filippo Marinetti , and Joan Miro
Manufacturer: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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Binding: Hardcover

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Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing (Themes)
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Drawing Now: Eight Propositions
Infinite Possibilities: Serial Imagery In 20th-Century Drawings
Experimental Drawing

ASIN: 0870706632
Release Date: 2004-11-02

Book Description

Many of the key achievements in art of the last 125 years have been worked out on paper. From pictorial investigations that expanded the possibilities of vision to the invention of entirely new kinds of media, drawing has been the perfect laboratory for avant-garde experimentation. Drawing from the Modern traces such groundbreaking innovation through the unparalleled holdings of the drawings collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Drawing has historically been understood as a mark or line on paper--the record of a bodily gesture, an inscription of the action of the hand, an expression of the mind. Since the 1880s, however, artists have sought to interrupt these seemingly unbreakable links between mark, hand, and imagination. Defying long-held definitions of drawing and rejecting traditional materials, modern artists invented a host of practices, altering not only the field of drawing but artmaking in general. Examining masterworks from the Museum's collection of nearly 7,000 works on paper in three chronological volumes beginning in the 1880s and continuing through today, Drawing from the Modern reconsider artists' repudiation of traditional drafting methods, assault on the use of the single sheet of paper, and introduction of new materials. Going to the heart of avant-garde innovation, all three volumes showcase new formal strategies, including collage, abstraction, chance, and the integration of text and image, as well as new subject matter, including the urban experience, the body, and identity. Volume I, presented here, spans the period from 1880 to 1940, and includes work by such artists as Jean Arp, Hans Bellmer, Paul Cazanne, Arshile Gorky, Georgia O'Keeffe, Odilon Redon, and Kurt Schwitters. Volume II, available in Spring 2005, will cover 1940 to 1975, and Volume III, available in Fall 2005, will bring us from 1975 to the present day.

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DRAWING from the MODERN.......2006-12-27

DRAWING from the MODERN is the first of a three part series published by MOMA as catalogue to accompany the chronologically arranged exhibitions of their drawing collection; in part, celebration of the seventy fifth anniversary of the founding of the Museum.

This first book looks at the late nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth. Care and preservation of these drawings dictate that they are displayed infrequently, paper being a delicate medium, subject to fading, discoloration and brittleness. The publication of this series then allows us to have at hand a history of drawings seldom seen, and a visual education demonstrating how problems of that era both evolved and worked themselves out.

The introduction by Jodi Hauptman is broad and well worth reading. Aside from her entertaining "end of art" stories, she addresses artists and process leading to the dissolution of prevalent notions: relationship of "mark" to "ground", took new form; spatial notions of an orderly page, questioned; the element of chance, explored as process; the ego relationship of an artist to work, dissolving. New imagery happened: collage, abstraction, grids, enhanced emotions, metaphors of feeling, the sublime re-imaged. New subjects explored brutalities of war, notions of "city", identity, the spiritual, and the abstract.

As perhaps with all process of art, the uncertainty of change brought forth much that is new. The 139 plates of drawings both demonstrate and give testimony by leading artists of the time to new era in process. Drawing as subject matter is fascinating. To be expected, the book is well printed. Of course, what is book one without book two and three?

Nancy Gutrich

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De Chirico and the Mediterranean
Jole de Sanna
Manufacturer: Rizzoli International Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0847821498
Release Date: 1998-12-15

Book Description

The Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) was a master of metaphysical painting. His fusion of fantastic and dream imagery with object from everyday experience creates a surreal, sometimes disturbing landscape. This fully illustrated catalogue, published on the occasion of an important exhibition in Italy, presents de Chirico's work in relation to the world and myths of classical antiquity.

In 1919 in Rome, de Chirico discovered a neoclassical calling that appears in his subsequent work in his use of perspective, statuary and other objects, and classical characters. This scholarly work discusses de Chirico's neoclassical aesthetic as it contributes to his original metaphysical philosophy.

Giorgio De Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne

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rethinking de chirico

Giorgio De Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne
Michael Taylor , and Guigone Rolland
Manufacturer: Merrell
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Giorgio De Chirico: 1888-1978: the Modern Myth (Taschen Basic Art)

ASIN: 185894189X

Book Description

The enigmatic paintings of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), with their dreamlike imagery of deserted city squares filled with mysterious shadows, stopped clocks, and sleeping statues, had a profound influence on modern art. A key to understanding de Chirico's œuvre is an early series of eight paintings of the mythical Greek princess Ariadne. This theme, to which de Chirico returned again and again throughout his life, exhibits a serial approach to making art that foreshadows the work of Andy Warhol. Some 180 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and documentary photographs, as well as essays considering the literary, artistic, historical, and philosophical meanings of this series of paintings, including an unpublished text by Max Ernst, constitute an unparalleled range of primary research materials, and provide the best overall account of de Chirico's career.

Customer Reviews:

rethinking de chirico.......2004-11-05

this catalogue and the exhibition that accompanied it offer a brilliantly argued, revisionist account of the post-1919 work of giorgio de chirico, who remains one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century. overturning decades of negative opinion regarding the paintings that de chirico made after the first world war, when he abandoned his earlier metaphysical style, michael taylor convincingly argues that the artist continued to create highly interesting and often thought provoking works of art. taylor uses the theme of the myth of ariadne, which runs throughout de chirico's long career, as a lens by which to explore the diverse range of stylistic changes that the artist underwent in response to external factors such as the return to order movement espoused by his friend jean cocteau. i would heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of modern art, especially surrealism and metaphysical painting, which has been forever changed by this superb account.

alan charlton,@tokyo university

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Comical, obsessive, paranoid, ironic, and brilliant.
Autobiography of genius (in both senses)

The Memoirs of Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio De Chirico
Manufacturer: Da Capo
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Binding: Paperback

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Hebdomeros & Other Writngs
De Chirico: The Metaphysical Period, 1888-1919
Giorgio De Chirico: The Endless Journey

ASIN: 0306805685

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Comical, obsessive, paranoid, ironic, and brilliant........2002-04-05

In the first section, this book is the best set of personal memoirs I have ever read, surpassing even Robert Graves' "Goodbye to All That". De Chirico could have been a great novelist, had he chosen that path. His descriptions of a childhood in Greece are unforgettable.

But his novel "Hebdomeros" was also a beautiful piece of writing. It's interesting that three major painters associated with surrealism, De Chirico, Dali and Magritte, were also great writers. (De Chirico would hate to be associated with surrealism, but like it or not - he's their Daddy.)

I'm disappointed in part II of the memoirs. I'm also disappointed in what de Chirico does not tell us in part I. He barely touches on his relationship with Apollinaire, wherein the poet would give titles to some of de Chirico's paintings. He doesn't mention his thoughts on learning of Apollinaire's death. He doesn't tell us which paintings he titled, and which were given names by Apollinaire.

On one page, Paul Eluard had good enough taste to purchase his paintings, and thus was not beyond redemption. Yet on the very next page, Eluard was an onanist and a mystical cretin. What happened in a few paragraphs to change his opinion of the man? De Chirico doesn't tell us, except to blame the corruption of Eluard on Andre Breton.

Many details important to students of the era were not even mentioned. Isabella Far is written about at length. Yet de Chirico does not even mention his wedding to her. They are companions for decades and suddenly, he refers to her as his wife. Duh? When did you get married? Where were you? What was the wedding like? Somebody correct me if I overlooked something.

He outlived almost all of his enemies, (and according to de Chirico, his enemies were more numerous than the stars in the sky). He outlived almost all of the surrealists. What did he think when learning of the deaths of Eluard or Breton? What was his opinion of Magritte, to whom he had once written a friendly thank you note? What was it Magritte had written to him?

Unfortunately, details like this are not to be found. Instead, we get an enemies list of Italian critics and modernist painters, whose names most readers in the English-speaking world will not recognize.

Even so, the character revealed in these memoirs is unique. He's obsessive, paranoid, romantic, imperious to the modern world, and at times comical. But he is always guided by a stubborn integrity and a search for what he called "mystery and poetry".

Yet, he is involved in such comical episodes. He's been accused of forging his early paintings and selling them. He's accused of denouncing some of his genuine early paintings as forgeries because he was jealous of the high prices they were drawing. His later work could not command such high prices. Even stranger and more ironic, he's accused of forging his own paintings and then denouncing his forgeries as forgeries!

Despite these absurd adventures, no painter ever left a body of work that was more replete with mystery. No painter was ever more poetic. Rene Magritte credits de Chirico with teaching him that the supreme art was poetry, and that a painter at his best, could be a poet with his brush and canvas.

More than any 20th Century painter, de Chirico's greatest paintings were like that. They were poems, songs of love. And they will haunt generations to come, long after Picasso, Matisse, and Monet have been forgotten. At their best, these memoirs are a haunting, unforgettable poem.

Autobiography of genius (in both senses).......1998-01-04

De Chirico, historically the first (small s) surrealist (even the Surrealists admit this) was exalted as a visionary for his earliest paintings, then conveniently vilified by his followers (led by the despicable Andre Breton) when he radically changed his style. The bitterness and frustration of this situation (and it was a long frustration -- De Chirco lived well into his nineties) is very much to the fore in this remarkable book. The mysterious qualities of his painting, too, are much in evidence, and great care is lavished on seemingly trivial incidents whose significance is left very much to the reader's own cogitations. Unforgettable are such passages as his defense of "maisons closes" (whorehouses) as decent workplaces, his memories of the Dalcroze-inspired Braun sisters, and the strange juxtaposition of his being required as a boy to kiss a priest's hand with the frustration of having always to refuse his barbers' offers of a rubdown. Not a book for everyone, surely, but for those seeking to unravel one of the great enigmas of 20th century art, essential. Footnote: De Chirico's status as a painter is currently going through a fascinating process of re-evaluation, and the "new" case for De Chirico is perhaps most eloquently put forth in a beautifully produced catalogue from Hunter College and the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa DeChirico in Rome, titled "Giorgio De Chirico and America," filled with superb reproductions, documentary photographs and stimulating essays.

De Chirico: The Metaphysical Period, 1888-1919

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DISCOVERING DE CHIRICO
Brilliant treatment of the the artist
poorly organized + written
The Mindscapes of de Chirico
A delight for de Chirico enthusiasts.

De Chirico: The Metaphysical Period, 1888-1919
Paolo Baldacci
Manufacturer: Bulfinch Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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The Memoirs of Giorgio de Chirico
Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting

ASIN: 0821224999

Amazon.com

The warm colors and familiar icons in the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico are deceptively soothing. The varying lines of perspective, blurring of indoor and outdoor space, and the coupling of ancient images with turn-of-the-century industry are both vaguely familiar and certainly disconcerting, evocative of being lost in a city or wandering through a stranger's home. Vacant plazas, shadowy arcades, and lonely statues are the eerie edges of dreams that are lost in the morning. Even de Chirico's most standard still lifes are ambient and consuming.

De Chirico's complete early work, that of his "metaphysical period," is gathered in this generously sized volume from Bulfinch Press. The work from museums and private collections from around the world illustrates critical exposition as well as exhaustive documentation (three pages of notes for a 20-page chapter) of de Chirico's training and production. The catalog overflows with color entries and black-and-white supplementary illustrations of family, friends, places, influential works, and drawing studies that contributed to the evolution of the painter and his masterpieces. The book's author, Paolo Baldacci, writes in his introduction that "practically all of the paintings executed from 1908-09 to the summer of 1914 are fundamental for understanding the various phases of de Chirico's aesthetic development. The works of these crucial years, rich in symbolism and dense with thought, cast in pictorial form a vast conception of the world, of life, and of art drawn from de Chirico's intensive reading of Nietzsche, Leopardi, Schopenhauer, and Heraclitus." --Manine Golden

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DISCOVERING DE CHIRICO.......2006-06-18

This book is for those just discovering De Chirico, as well as those who have valued him for many years. The color reproductions are many and excellent. His various subjects are presented in developing groups; great idea. This painter was so honored in the heyday of surrealism; because he was the most original; the pioneer of a large sweeping mood of painting. You can read as much of the text as you wish; but don't be discouraged by the endless rambling of the author; he just didn't know when to stop. If you were not a De Chirico fan when you get this book, you will be when you own it.

Brilliant treatment of the the artist.......2002-11-24

This book is on the highest level of scholarship and aesthetic criticism, bringing together many facets of art, philosophy and literature that gave birth to de Chirico's great works. Paolo Baldacci is a brilliant and erudite writer and an expert on this important, original artist. I am very disappointed that this excellent work is now out of print. The reproductions are of the highest quality as well, and this is a book that should be on the shelf of everyone interested in surrealism.

poorly organized + written.......2002-10-11

excellent photos.

a fascinating period, the pre-surrealist era. not much has been
published about de chirico's brother, alberto savinio, musician, poet, and painter, who contributed more to de chirico's development than commonly known.

unfortunately this book is marred by poor organization and writing. after developing interesting thoughts, baldacci then admits that there is not evidence to support his suppositions..."probably", "if", "doubtless", "we can even imagine", and so on. i've read better papers by undergraduates. better writers would summarize where baldacci chooses to drag in long, diffuse quotations.

baldacci is fascinated by unknowns about de chirico. much about the past may remain unknown, a fact of life.

The Mindscapes of de Chirico.......2002-01-27

True surrealism is the most profound form of art because it tackles the absurdities and contradictions of our modern world and helps us to work them out through our Subconsciousness and dreams. The first time I saw an exhibition of de Chirico's works, I had extremely vivid and memorable dreams for a week after and felt "cured."

But like any religion that can deeply touch people, Surrealism, once it became famous also attracted its fair share of quacks and charlatans. This is why de Chirico is so important: In the same way that Patti Smith was 'punk' before Punk Rock was officially invented, de Chirico was a surrealist before the Surrealist Movement took conscious shape with Andre Breton's shrill "Manifesto of Surrealism" in 1924. De Chirico didn't jump on the bandwagon. He was pulling it!

This worthy but pricey (therefore minus a couple of stars) book focuses on this early period when de Chirico was happily pursuing his own path into the twilight, undisturbed by the excessive fuss that the Surrealist movement and its showmen, like Dali, later whipped up.

Paintings like "The Endless Voyage" (1914) show a jarring clutter of objects setting up intangible lines of tension, often with humorous results. In effect, his art works like the human brain, abstracting images and objects from their natural context and relocating them to the landscape of the mind and memory.

Setting the stage with his deserted cityscapes painted with sharp contrasts of light and shadow, distorted perspectives, and a blurring of the border between interior and exterior, de Chirico evokes a haunting, ominous, but strangely relaxing dream world. This deep psychological aspect of his paintings has him constantly reinterpreting themes, leading to recurrent motifs. In these early paintings lavishly reproduced in this massive tome, he constantly uses statues as focal points, later replaced by his trademark faceless mannequins. Other mysterious objects further increase the element of enigma.

De Chirico was a surrealist more by accident than design and his work relied less heavily on overt humor and shock than the more famous surrealists who followed him, like Dali and Magritte. De Chirico's focus was always on beauty and the creation of moods through an appeal to a deeper psychological language. For this reason, while much surrealist work has dated like an old joke, Chirico's art is still as fresh as ever.

A delight for de Chirico enthusiasts........1999-06-12

More than its many full-color and good-sized reproductions of the great artist's best paintings, this book also offers much fascinating text to illuminate the many influences that shaped the life and work of this supreme creator of enigmatic clarities.

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Hebdomeros - Giorgio De Chirico
De Chirico's paintings in verbal form
Unearthly
Unearthly

Hebdomeros & Other Writngs
Giorgio De Chirico
Manufacturer: Exact Change
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1878972065
Release Date: 2004-02-02

Book Description

The artist Giorgio de Chirico's novel, Hebdomeros is a dream-like book of situations and landscapes reminiscent of his paintings. In his introduction John Ashbery calls the book "the finest work of Surrealist fiction," noting that de Chirico "invented for the occasion a new style and a new kind of novel . . . his long run-on sentences, stitched together with semi-colons, allow a cinematic freedom o f narration . . . his language, like his painting, is invisible: a transparent but dense medium containing objects that are more real than reality." Hebdomeros is accompanied by an appendix of previously untranslated or uncollected writings, including M. Dudron's Adventure, a second, fragmentary novel translated by John Ashbery.

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Hebdomeros - Giorgio De Chirico.......2006-12-15

Giorgio De Chirico is considered one of the founders of the Surrealist school of art, and this is his only novel. De Chirico is famous for a body of work created early in the Twentieth Century, approximately coinciding with the First World War, whose works are classified as "Metaphysical Painting"; these works depict haunting, desolate landscapes and odd arrangements of seemingly incongruous arrangements of objects, depicted with illogical perspectives. Hebdomeros - published in 1929, about ten years after De Chirico abandoned his earlier style in favor of a neo-classical style he was to embrace for the rest of his career - is in the spirit and has the feel of his earlier works; it is a prose version of those haunting landscapes and still lifes.

Hebdomeros cannot be said to have a story or a plot; it is more like an extended series of visions, a tour through the protagonist's dreamlike experiences. The story has an odd familiarity in the form of a similarity to the disconnectedness and illogicality of our dreams or reveries. It feels like being immersed in somebody's dream. Hebdomeros is a featureless being; this novel is not about him but about his experiences.

This novel is like a form of prose poetry. The scenes and images he strings together paint for the mind's eye the same sort of haunting, desolate images represented in his famous works. People, places, things and events have an inner logic of their own, but they all somehow harmonize together into a coherence reminiscent of our dreams.

This is perhaps one of the few novels that can make you look forward to reading it a second time. It is a testament to De Chirico's genius as an artist that he was able to so successfully translate into another medium the world created by his famous works of visual art.

De Chirico's paintings in verbal form.......2001-06-10

Those who've sampled the often arrogant and self-glorifying work of Breton and other surrealists will find Hebdomeros to be unique. De Chirico's novel is poignantly shameful and delicately heart-wrenching. It isn't easily forgotton.

Unearthly.......1999-06-03

HEBDOMEROS is quite unearthly and would be a disappointment to anyone looking for a conventional novel. But you are likely here for something else. It moves with the logic of a dream, passing from one scene to the next with the same warp of tension a plotted novel might have, yet HEBDOMEROS has no plot, it is errant, distracted. "It's strange," Hebdomeros was thinking, "as for me, the idea that something had escaped my understanding would keep me awake at nights, whereas people in general are not in the least perturbed when they see or read or hear things that they find completely obscure." This from the opening page, a comment on its own strangeness, instructs the reader a little in what is to come. And what follows is completely beautiful. Here is something to finish on: "Hebdomeros turned his steps again toward the rivers with the concrete banks, toward the decaying palaces whose domes and weather vanes rose up under the ever-fleeing clouds. This forbidding place whose solemn door was closed at the moment ought to have saddened him, but the recollection of what he had seen there during moments spent in the midst of a scattered and indifferent public was quite enough to console him. He saw, moving up slowly out of the chiaroscuro of his memory and little by little defining themselves in his mind, the shapes of those temples and sanctuaries built in plaster that stand at the foot of sheltering mountains and rocks through which ran narrow passes that made one strangely aware not only of the unknown worlds nearby, but also of those distant horizons heavy with adventure that ever since his unhappy childhood Hebdomeros had always loved."

Unearthly.......1999-06-03

HEBDOMEROS is quite unearthly and would be a disappointment to anyone looking for a conventional novel. But you are likely here for something else. It moves with the logic of a dream, passing from one scene to the next with the same warp of tension a plotted novel might have, yet HEBDOMEROS has no plot, it is errant, distracted. "It's strange," Hebdomeros was thinking, "as for me, the idea that something had escaped my understanding would keep me awake at nights, whereas people in general are not in the least perturbed when they see or read or things that they find completely obscure." This from the opening page, a comment on its own strangeness, instructing the reader a little in what is to come. And what follows is completely beautiful. Here is something to finish on: "Hebdomeros turned his steps again toward the rivers with the concrete banks, toward the decaying palaces whose domes and weather vanes rose up under the ever-fleeing clouds. This forbidding place whose solemn door was closed at the moment ought to have saddened him, but the recollection of what he had seen there during moments spent in the midst of a scattered and indifferent public was quite enough to console him. He saw, moving up slowly out of the chiaroscuro of his memory and little by little defining themselves in his mind, the shapes of those temples and sanctuaries built in plaster that stand at the foot of sheltering mountains and rocks through which ran narrow passes that made one strangely aware not only of the unknown worlds nearby, but also of those distant horizons heavy with adventure that ever since his unhappy childhood Hebdomeros had always loved."

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this book could have been better
Beautifully produced catalog with provocative articles

De Chirico And America
Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco
Manufacturer: Umberto Allemandi
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Giorgio De Chirico: The Endless Journey

ASIN: 8842206822

Book Description

Highlights the artist's first visit to America and includes work he rendered during his stay in New York.

Customer Reviews:

this book could have been better.......1999-12-16

De Chirico is commonly seen as the first surrealist. He is also the creator of the most profound paintings ever. But Baldacci engages for too long in horse manure "painting analysis"; when the whole point of de Chirico's paintings is that they can't be analyzed with words. If Baldacci wanted to comment on de Chricio, he should have been a painter himself. Describing de Chirico's paintings with words is both ineffective and unsatisfying. Also, Baldacci talks a lot about Nietzsche and other philosophers whom de Chirico liked. While his comments are usually in the spirit of Nietzsche's philosophy and reflect many of de Chirico's own beliefs, I suggest you yourself read Nietzsche or Walter Kaufmann's commentary on Nietzsche ("Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist") because Baldacci is at times off, and in any case you will get an incomplete picture of Nietzsche if you just read this book. De Chirico's life is a tragic reminder of a revolution in human approach to the world that could have thrived after Nietzsche fortold its coming; instead, it was extinguished, and only some of Nietzsche's other prophecies, WWI, II, and the Holocaust, became true.

Beautifully produced catalog with provocative articles.......1998-04-24

This is a catalogue of a very small show (seen only at the Hunter College, NY, art gallery in fall 1996) which focused on De Chirico's brief time in America and the artistic use he made of it. But the catalogue's text extends well beyond this narrow subject into a full-scale re-evaluation of this much-misunderstood (and frequently reviled) genius of Metaphysical Art. (Fagiolo dell'Arco, by the way, is responsible only for a single article. The catalogue was edited by Emily Braun, and both the catalogue and exhibit were under her guidance, with the help of her students in Art History.) A very fine addition to the De Chirico literature.

Painters in the Theater of the European Avant-garde

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Painters in the Theater of the European Avant-garde
Linn Garafola , Eric Michaud , Marga Paz , Giorgio De Chirico , Andre Derain , Juan Gris , Fernand Leger , Kasimir Malevich , Joan Miro , Wassily Kandinsky , El Lissitzky , Henri Matisse , Pablo Picasso , Alexander Rodchenko , Francis Picabia , George Grosz , and Piet Mondrian
Manufacturer: Actar/Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Aldeasa
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 8480032049
Release Date: 2001-10-01

Book Description

The early decades of the 20th century saw unprecedented cooperation between the performing and visual arts. Painters and other visual artists working in a variety of avant-garde styles, such as Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Constructivism, and Futurism, worked in the world of theater and dance throughout Europe, creating masterpieces inspired by the explosion of creativity in the performing arts, from the ballets of Diaghilev and Balanchine to the plays of the Russian Meierkhol'd and Futurists such as Marinetti, and operas by the likes of Wagner and Offenbach. It was this burst of integration that led to the formulation of the idea of the "Total Art Creation," (a term coined by Wagner), and enriched both the theater and the visual arts. This handsome volume, published on the occasion of a major exhibition at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid, examines these avant-garde experiments in fusion between the arts with extensive color illustrations by virtually every major painter of the period: artists like Picasso, Kandinsky, Leger, and others, as well as in-depth essays on several of the performing art forms and the ways they involved visual artists in their production.

Giorgio De Chirico: 1888-1978: the Modern Myth (Taschen Basic Art)

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Giorgio De Chirico: 1888-1978: the Modern Myth (Taschen Basic Art)
Magdalena Holzhey
Manufacturer: Taschen
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ASIN: 3822841528

Book Description

Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico (1888-1978) was hugely influential in the early years of the Surrealist movement. His paintings during the teens in Paris, where he moved in 1911, caused such a stir that such important figures as Picasso and Paul Eluard immediately praised them. This phase of his work, which he later termed pittura metafisica (metaphysical painting) was marked by dramatic compositions involving sharp perspective, striking shadows, geometrical planes, voids of space, and a general feeling of anxiety and loneliness; the sense of absurdity evoked by the mannequin-like figures in almost nightmarish landscapes seemed to suggest a Freudian expression of the unconscious. After 1930, De Chirico turned to a more classical style of painting and continued in the same vein for the rest of his career; his later work was widely criticized, especially by the Surrealists who had so admired his early paintings.

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De Chirico Cameo (Great Modern Masters)
Jose Maria Faerna
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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