Giorgio de Chirico. The Disquieting Muses (1916/18)

Giorgio de Chirico

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting

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The Disquieting Muses (1916/18). Giorgio de Chirico
Oil on canvas. 97 cm x 66 cm
Private collection

Fundamental painting in the work of Giorgio de Chirico, created when the movement of the metaphysical painting was born that was an inspiration for the Surrealists (as the Surrealist painters themselves have told).

This movement started during the horror of the World War I; and like many other movements and artists of the time, it makes sense that it criticized the senseless and dreadful world in which they lived.

De Chirico posed his works as a reality that is beyond the physical world we know. A kind of dream where clear symbols appear: statues, mannequins, articulated dolls, classic architecture, trains and chimneys of factories. Dehumanized and full of solitude scenarios.

De Chirico was obsessed with what is enigmatic, disturbing and mysterious of everyday things that we consider evident and reasonable.

In this painting, the disquieting muses —that would be Thalia and Melpomene, muses of comedy and tragedy— and Apollo are not alive, seem to be part of the props of an oneiric theatre play (oneiric means part of a dream) as absurd as reality is.

Recommended links:

Metaphysical Painting.

Giorgio de Chirico and His Uninhabited Architecture.

The “Avant-garde” movements.

Surrealism.

The Treachery of Images, Magritte.

The Persistenc. of Memory, Salvador Dalí.

The Paranoid-Critical Method.

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