Giorgio de Chirico
and the Hellenic Myth

Self-portrait with Athena's head, 1919

This exhibition, as stated in its title, is structured around the thematology of the Myth -the privileged reference domain of the artist- and especially around the position of the Greek Myth within the later works of De Chirico. As a matter of fact, this second creative period of De Chirico was intentionally selected: our purpose was to contribute, by all possible means, to the new approaches made to this creative period during the last few years in Europe. As unanimously agreed, De Chirico is the "par excellence" contemporary artist who has expressed the plastic narration of the myth. Via the myth he was exploring and coming closer to his own personal myth. The myth has played an essential role in the aesthetic and intellectual research of this painter and thinker, who was also the heir of a classical tradition, both from origin and from the history of his native country, Greece.

The incubation and the development of his mythological memory were effected in Volos during his childhood, and later in Athens during his early adolescence. The universe of Ancient Greece became the cradle of his imagination. And when in 1905 at the age of 17 he left Greece, like Jason and the Argonauts in search of his own golden fleece, Greece stayed with him during the long trip. Volos, Athens, Munich, Florence, Turin, Paris, Ferrara, Rome... are some of the cities that played a crucial role in his intellectual evolution and exerted profound influence on his work.

In the Munich of the years during his education -still the uncontested city of the German-speaking Avant-Garde- the presence of Greek antiquity was widespread and dynamic. BÖclin, the visionary teacher and fervent preacher of the concept that Greek antiquity was the common root of all cultural expressions, initiated De Chirico into the World of visionary art; an art characterized by the flight out of reality and into the dream. Since then and throughout his metaphysical period, De Chirico was the "inventor" of a mythology of the Modern which is characterized by the constant preoccupation to conserve the existing relation between the everlasting myth and the contemporary pictorial codes.

Alarming Muses, 1974

Kyriakos Koutsomallis

© ART TOPOS, 1996
Last update: 3 Aug. 1996
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