Chirico - "Mysterious and Sentimental City"

Chirico (1888-1978) was the founder of Italy's unique "Metaphysical Painting," a pioneer of Surrealism, and an ancestor of postmodern art. His paintings exert a captivating power and enduring influence, especially works from 1912 to 1917 which are filled with magical and fantastical visions, possessing an extraordinary mythical power and remarkable allegory.

Particularly the sparsely populated "Mysterious and Sentimental City": all under the light of a hot summer noon, desolate and vast urban plazas, a statue, series of arcades, mysterious and unsettling light and shadow projections. Absurdly and anomalously, some lonely and silent figures in the distance, an abandoned handcart. Or the distant horizon beyond red brick walls, a tall tower or factory chimney, sometimes a series of locomotives speeding by in the distance emitting white smoke, forming an urban scene of absurdity and sentimental unease.

Within a unified appearance, he constructs spatial scenes with distinctive architectural structures, using chiaroscuro colors to create a mysterious atmosphere. Through captivating perspective and multiple visual points, he forms deep plunging spaces, thus revealing like a hidden urban labyrinth. Chirico's works resemble misleading and lonely places; on the horizon, these locomotives' calls—impassable through walls—seem to only invite the viewer to an impossible departure. Those chimneys and handcarts contrast with statues and arcades, merging into the same temporal visual imagery of the arriving industrial era, metaphorically suggesting the threat of industrial society to humanity and traditional culture.