Author's Copy - Piazza d'Italia

The urban landscape was already a popular subject in the Middle Ages and the Modern Era, but predominantly in an idealized manner. Scenes of city life became typical themes with a more realistic interpretation starting in the 19th century. It's worth remembering that immediately following the realist movements of the 19th century, the Impressionists also placed great emphasis on the everyday, on everyday life, with a certain predilection, however, for the frenetic pace of the city, its crowds, traffic, and typically bourgeois settings. This work is part of Giorgio de Chirico's famous Piazze d'Italia, a series in which the master of Metaphysical Art created urban scenes suspended in a still, timeless dimension.

De Chirico's Italian squares embody the very essence of Metaphysical Art and all its key tenets. First and foremost, that detachment from reality, a dimension where the impossible becomes plausible. In this sense, the illusionistic devices De Chirico employs in a work like this are emblematic, such as the impossible perspectives and unreal shadows. The buildings appearing in the squares derive from a taste for quotation that is typical of Metaphysical Art, and which leads De Chirico, in these works, to incorporate architectural elements typical of the Italian tradition. Rather, it is their arrangement and combination that give rise to that enigmatic and mysterious dimension so characteristic of Metaphysical Art. Finally, from a formal perspective, the deliberately illusory nature of this space is reaffirmed by De Chirico's objective and spare style.

Giorgio De Chirico, born in Volos, Greece, in 1888, died in Rome in 1978. He is the founder of Metaphysical painting. De Chirico reclaims images that already exist, familiar to the collective imagination. But he creates an effect of estrangement through the process of displacement—the sudden appearance of an object outside its usual context—or condensation, the fusion of multiple objects into a single entity. Metaphysical painting is also characterized by the illusory nature of its images.

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