Giorgio de Chirico. The labyrinth of dreams and ideas: Saint-Benin Centre, Aosta | produced by Fondazione Calarota with the support of Galleria d'Arte Maggiore g.a.m.

The Department of Education and Culture of the Autonomous Region of Valle d'Aosta is offering, at the Centro Saint-Bénin in Aosta, from April 29 to September 30, the exhibition Giorgio De Chirico. The labyrinth of dreams and ideas - curated by Luigi Cavallo with Franco Calarota - which, through an important selection of works, some rarely exhibited and coming from prestigious private and museum collections, presents itself as a unique opportunity to closely observe and enjoy masterpieces by the Master usually not accessible to the general public.

 

As Luigi Cavallo recalls in the exhibition catalogue, Giorgio de Chirico (Volos 1888 - Rome 1978) "is the newest painter in the old world. Taking a look at his work means retracing the creative adventures of the twentieth century, foundations and comparisons for our time".

 

The exhibition at the Saint-Bénin Centre in Aosta illustrates the path under the banner of Metaphysics - understood by the master as a chosen quality of painting and not as a characteristic of the subjects - which flows along the different stylistic phases of his work: recovery of classical tradition, surreal incitements, reconnection with reality through the modulations of the Baroque and therefore the invention of new themes and techniques, from the Mysterious Baths to neometaphysics. Chapters that when they appeared, in the overlapping of poetics, provoked controversy in the international arena, the most heated for the love-hate relationship that the surrealists had for De Chirico, recognized as the ideal initiator of the French movement.

 

The definition of Ardengo Soffici still holds up, who in 1914 defined De Chirico's painting in the magazine Lacerba as "a writing of dreams" and other critics added that that "painting of dreams" seemed painted in the dream. Over the years, the cultural games around Giorgio de Chirico have provoked philosophical, literary, psychoanalytic implications. His utopian visions have stimulated architecture and his indefinite, arcane atmospheres, the sense of suspended time, of infinity that falls even on everyday and common things have been shared by modern narrative. De Chirico has thus disseminated with painting quantities of subjects in the most varied cultural areas and the perspective is more fertile than ever: hence also the desire to renew the critical approach of an author who so completely represents our era, allows us to figuratively actualize the past that perpetuates itself in the present, a chain that allows man to renew himself, to venture into the future feeling rooted in a centuries-old story.

 

Giorgio de Chirico. The labyrinth of dreams and ideas presents in Valle d'Aosta through 40 oil paintings, 10 tempera and drawings, 15 graphics, also hand-colored by the author, an important selection of rarely exhibited works coming from prestigious private Italian collections, from public collections, from the MART of Rovereto and from the Museo Casa Rodolfo Siviero, which have exceptionally abandoned their original location to be admired by the general public.