What is Pittura Metafisica ? What is the origin of Pittura Metafisica ?
Three great Italian artists officially started the birth of metaphysical painting: Giorgio de Chirico, his brother Andrea and Carlo Carra. The meeting between these artists happened randomly in Ferrara and marked the birth of a new pictorial current. As for the adjective “metaphysics”, borrowed from philosophy, it was introduced by Andronico di Rodi about the distinction of Aristotle’s writings into two groups: the physics treatises and those concerning the essence of things. The Aristotelian works of the second group deal with realities of which we have no direct experience and which are not immediately perceptible. The term metaphysics, in Greek, means “beyond, after” physics.
The works of art that are part of the current of metaphysical painting refer to subjects that go beyond what we see and perceive with the senses.
Metaphysical painters like de Chirico oppose both Italian Futurism and French Divisionism and Impressionism. Metaphysical painting favors a rigorously geometric space, a solid volume of objects, homogeneous colors, clear and decisive signs, schematic perspective. The contents of metaphysical painting were disseminated through the magazine “Practical values”, whose experience ended in 1922 in Milan, when some artists, who called themselves “Novecento” organized the first exhibition. Among the most important authors of the pictorial movement, in addition to the three founders, we also remember Giorgio Morandi.
