BY HOLLY T .
It ’ s hard to believe this exhibition wasn ’ t conceived in response to the COVID-19 pandemic . Even its installation on isolated screen islands to facilitate social distancing accentuates the enigmatic mood of Giorgio de Chirico ’ s paintings of deserted urban squares in which time seems to stand still . In fact , planning began three years ago . Though he lived to be 90 , de Chirico ’ s best-known works all date to a single , admittedly eventful , decade between 1909 and 1919 and are accordingly limited in number . The Kunsthalle convinced distant private lenders and eminent museums to send their works to Hamburg by drawing on its excellent collection of 19th-century European art to shed light , not only on de Chirico ’ s earlier , formative years at the Munich Art Academy where he studied from 1906 to 1909 , but also on his later classicist work .
The stars of the show remain de Chirico ’ s remarkable “ metaphysical ” masterpieces of the second decade of the 20th century , their Mediterranean ochres , terracottas , and teals so welcome to eyes dulled by this persistently cold and gray Hamburg winter-spring . De Chirico ’ s matte surfaces , influenced by early Renaissance Italian frescos , and his simplified classical architectural forms and sculptures distill the baked look of southern European piazzas . However , his world is no place to relax on a sunny holiday . Caged in by sharply receding arcades and brick walls blocking any view into the distance , the artist ’ s empty squares are filled with long , dark , shadows , often of unseen figures or objects . Contradictions of perspective , scale , and time , and incongruous juxtapositions of objects abound . The menacing shadows and greenish skies give some of the pictures the unsettling “ day for night ” feel of film noir .
De Chirico , whose parents were Italian , grew up in Greece . Studying art in Munich , he admired the “ modern ” realistic treatment of the classical myths he ’ d grown up with by the late Romantic Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin , represented by several pictures in the exhibition , and the German symbolist printmaker Max Klinger . Several pieces from Klinger ’ s creative and beautifully crafted etching series are exhibited in small side rooms . In the fantastic and disturbing moods of Klinger ’ s prints , de Chirico recognized a state of “ both dream and reality ,” the Wachtraum described by the philosopher Schopenhauer , in which the truth of existence is revealed . The truth de Chirico reveals has to do with a kind of dejá vu or eternal recurrence of things posited by another German philosopher , Friedrich Nietzsche . Stopped clocks , passing trains , faceless mannequins , empty frames , and pictures within pictures are among de Chirico ’ s favorite props . Paintings have titles like Seer , Clairvoyant , and Returnee or Reincarnate .
After living in Paris from 1911-15 , where contact with Picasso and other avant-garde artists informed his distortions of scale and perspective , de Chirico returned to Italy to serve in the war . He survived a bout of Spanish flu in the pandemic of 1918 – 19 that may have killed as many as 50 million worldwide , including his friend Guillaume Apollinaire , the poet who first described de Chirico ’ s paintings as ” metaphysical .“
Shelly Schoeneshoefer stands next to Der Prophet ( Le Vaticinateur ), 1914 / 15 , Öl auf Leinwand , 89,6 x 70,1 cm
Holly T . joins Shelly S . as co-coordinator of the Art Group , taking over for Diana P . -S . who is AWCH vice president this year . Holly T . poses in front of Der Lohn des Wahrsagers ( La Récompense du dévin ), 1913
Öl auf Leinwand , 135,6 x 180 cm
50 In Hamburg