Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

The most famous twentieth-century Italian artist except possibly Modigliani, de Chirico has been one of the most influential creative figures of our time. Represented in public and private collections throughout the world and in innumerable one-man exhibitions. Now bitterly opposed to "modern" art of which, in youth, he was one of the most vital progenitors.
James Thrall Soby and Alfred H. Barr, Jr - Twentieth-century Italian art - Museum of Modern Art - 1949 - written on the occasion of the 28 June to 18 September 1949 exhibition - Giorgio de Chirico has been in 80 exhibitions at MoMA, between 1930 and 1989.

View over Piazza di Spagna from the Living Room of de Chirico's house

They say that Rome is at the centre of the world and that Piazza di Spagna is in the centre of Rome, therefore, my wife and I, would indeed be living in the centre of the centre of the world, which would be the apex of centrality, and the apogee of anti-eccentricity.
The Memoirs of Giorgio de Chirico.
In 1948 De Chirico bought the apartment at the fourth floor of Casa dei Borgognoni, a historical building (Piazza di Spagna n. 31). Later on he bought the apartment at the fourth floor of the adjoining building (n. 33) in order to obtain a large room where he displayed some of his most recent works of art.

View over SS. Trinità dei Monti from a rear room of de Chirico's house

Giorgio de Chirico was born on 10 July 1888 in Volos, a port in Thessaly (Greece), to Italian parents. His father Evaristo came from a noble family of Sicilian origin and was a railway engineer in charge of the construction of the Thessaly railway. His mother Gemma Cervetto came from a family of Genovese origin. In 1906 the family settled in Munich where Giorgio attended the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1911, after a short stay in Florence, he arrived in Paris, where in the autumn of 1912, he showed his work for the first time at Salon d'Automne. In March 1913, he exhibited at Salon des Indépendants. Picasso and Apollinaire took notice of his work. Apollinaire, who greatly admired his paintings, wrote a review of the exhibition the artist held in his studio in October. He defined de Chirico as "the most surprising painter of the young generation".
When de Chirico moved to his apartment in Piazza di Spagna his artistic career already spanned a period of 35 years. He was to continue painting for 30 more years, as he died on 20 November 1978 at 90 years of age.

De Chirico's Studio (on the table the black-feathered bicorne of his uniform as member of the French Academy to which he was elected in 1974)

En plein air is the act of painting outdoors and it was typical of most XIXth century artists. This did not apply to de Chirico who did not paint from life. In his studio he dedicated himself to re-elaborate some of his own paintings and others of the great masters of the past. Some of them were titled "D'après Delacroix, or Raphael, or Canaletto". In some instances he made exact replicas, a very discussed aspect of his poetics, destroying every conceptual distinction between original and copy. Already in 1949 dubious paintings had appeared and de Chirico maybe reacted to the large number of works of art which were falsely credited to him.

Gallery: Neometaphysical Works (70s)

Metaphysical painting was more a way of seeing than a formal school, (..) of which Giorgio de Chirico, was the founder and leading figure. The school's aim was to portray an imagery intensified by philosophical reverie, to convey a sense of enigma through an evocative juxtaposition of objects in "unreal" settings. (..) "Pittura metafisica" had no inaugural program, nor did it result in a widespread group activity. Yet the fact remains that it is a distinguishable movement in modern art. (..) The mannequin theme first appeared in de Chirico's art in 1914, while he was still in Paris. (..) At any rate, de Chirico soon began to include in his compositions draped, armless female figures, with the black outline of a single-eyed mask bound around their featureless heads. Presently these figures became male and female mannequins, clad in tights, with upholstered shoulders folded against their torsos like wings. In these pictures architecture functions merely as a backdrop to melancholy and ironic action by the mannequins. Thrall & Barr

Museo Carlo Bilotti: (left) Self-portrait in XVIIth century attire (50s); (right) Carlo Bilotti with Dubuffet in the Background by Larry Rivers (1994)

A visit to the House of de Chirico can be usefully complemented to one to a small museum which displays 18 of de Chirico's works of art (including a sculpture) which were bought by Carlo Bilotti and which he donated to the City of Rome at his death in 2006. Bilotti was an Italian-American entrepreneur and art collector, who mostly lived in Paris and New York and was very active in the worlds of art and finance. His collection of de Chirico spans over a period of 50 years.
The image used as background shows a girl playing with a circle, a detail of a late replica of one of de Chirico's most celebrated paintings of 1914 at Museo Carlo Bilotti.

Museo Carlo Bilotti: Ancient Greece subjects 1928-1929

In 1925 de Chirico returned to Paris. There he found himself acclaimed as the leading prophet of the surrealist movement in art, inaugurated the year before. For a very short time he appears to have accepted the role with enthusiasm; at least we know that during 1925 he often returned to the proto-surrealist subject matter of his Ferrarese period. But presently he quarreled violently with the leaders of surrealism. (..) For the most part, he now worked in a neo classical style, depicting a ruined and desolate Greece inhabited by wild horses. (..) In any case de Chirico's art became more and more eclectic, more and more concerned with technical virtuosity. He was never again to revert consistently to the apparitional painting on which his fame rests so securely. Thrall & Barr

Museo Carlo Bilotti: After Canaletto's "The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day" (50s)

During the 30s, de Chirico exhibited a number of works with the title of Venice, of which, however, little remains. The scene in this view shows a precise event: the historical regatta which took place on the feast day of the Redemptor, gathered opposite the Ducal Palace, with ten large boats decorated with varying degrees of opulence, followed by gondolas and smaller boats. The composition is typical of Venetian painting, particularly that of Guardi and Canaletto, indeed it is likely that this view of the historic regatta at Venice was inspired by two large canvases by the latter.

Living Room

In 1924 de Chirico met Raissa Samojlovna Gourevitch, a dancer who fled to Italy after the Russian Revolution. The two fell in love and eventually got married. They lived in Paris and it is thought that de Chirico was influenced by his wife who had a passion for archaeology in introducing some classical architectural elements in his paintings set in Ancient Greece. They divorced in 1931 and Raissa became a photographer and assistant at the Ostia Antica archaeological site near Rome in 1937. There she worked under the superintendent of the excavations, Guido Calza whom she married in 1945. Calza is best known for his excavation and reconstruction of Caseggiato di Diana and Horrea Epagathiana.

Dining room and gallery

The second wife of de Chirico was Isabella Pakszwer Far, nom de plume Isa Far. The two lived together for nearly fifty years and she masterminded the activity of her ageing husband, by directly dealing with the main Roman gallerists. Isa Far continued to live in the apartment until her death in 1990. She decided to create a foundation for maintaining the house and its works of art. The house was inaugurated on 20 November 1998 on the 20th anniversary of the artist's death. Its collection holds more than 600 paintings, sculptures and works on paper dating from 1925 to 1976, representative of de Chirico's various thematic and stylistic periods. The rooms and their 1950-style furniture were restored following a rigorous study of old photographs and historical anecdotes. The rooms are decorated with red damask curtains, ornate gold frames, wooden cherub sculptures, marble tables, silverware and Louis XVI-style armchairs.

See the houses of:
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Blanceflor Boncompagni Ludovisi
Pietro Canonica
Mario Praz
Keats-Shelley