Giorgio De Chirico - Self-Portrait

The self-portrait is a genre that has been widespread throughout the history of art up to the present day. The first examples date back to the Middle Ages, but not as an independent genre, but rather contextualized within a work. As the artist's self-awareness and his or her role developed, self-portraits, especially those set within other works, began to gain popularity as early as the Renaissance. The first examples of independent self-portraits, however, date back to the 16th century. Often, the artist's self-portrait serves as a sort of stylistic manifesto for the painter who conceived it.

This interpretation of the self-portrait by Giorgio de Chirico is perfectly aligned with the painter's artistic vision. For de Chirico—and this is one of the founding principles of Metaphysical Art—art, saturated by avant-garde experimentation, must necessarily return to its origins. This presupposes, from a strictly formal perspective, the use of a figurative language faithful to sensory data. Thus, in this self-portrait, the artist's description is accurate, yet we can also sense his strong personality in the gruff frown he adopts, typical of the surly irony that characterized this great figure. Stylistically, a sense of strong objectivity, typically contemporary, prevails. The graphic line that constructs the volumes and shadows is extremely technical and elegant.

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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