Mazzoleni closes 40th anniversary celebrations with Giorgio de Chirico exhibition
Giorgio de Chirico, Luce pomeridiana, 1976, oil on canvas, 100 x 75 cm, 39 3/8 x 29 1/2 in. Photo: Studio Abbruzzese.
TURIN.—
The exhibition Giorgio de Chirico. The Contemporary Enigma ideally brings Mazzoleni's 40th anniversary celebrations to a close, presenting the work of Giorgio de Chirico, an artist who has been central to the family's collecting history and subsequently to the gallery's activity.
The masterpieces of the pictor optimus are presented here in dialogue with a selection of works by established and contemporary artists who, in different ways, have drawn on his legacy, reinterpreting his style and most distinctive motifs across a period spanning from the 1930s to the present day. These open-ended juxtapositions suggest the idea of a "continuous Metaphysics": a visual language that runs throughout de Chirico's artistic trajectory and continues to resurface in the practices of subsequent generations. The contemporary enigma evoked by the title refers to the inexhaustible capacity of de Chirico's works to engage viewers and artists in dialogue across different periods, artistic languages and contemporary practices.
The exhibition has been conceived through a direct dialogue with the participating artists, as well as through the invaluable support of the respective Archives and Foundations. Nunzio, Paolini and Senatore have created new works especially for the occasion; Francolino and Astore have each curated a site-specific installation of their works; while do Espírito Santo has made previously unseen works available to complement the exhibition narrative.
Through dialogues with Alberto Savinio, Felice Casorati, Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini, Salvo and Wifredo Lam, the exhibition traces a genealogy of artists who addressed the themes of myth, classicism and metamorphosis through distinct approaches.
The shared metaphysical sensibility connecting de Chirico's Gli Archeologi - Amore e Musica (1930s) and Savinio's Jeux d'Anges (1930) resonates in Casorati's paintings and Fabro's monumental drawings (Ogni ordine è contemporaneo d'ogni altro ordine. Quattro modi d'esaminare la facciata del SS. Redentore a Venezia. Palladio, 1972-1973), which reimagine the Renaissance tradition, as well as in Paolini's exploration of the ambiguity of the double and Salvo's ongoing reflection on classical models. Lam's hybrid and visionary figures introduce a mythology that resists colonial homogenisation while reconnecting, through dreamlike imagery, with its cultural roots.
The practices of Nunzio, Salvatore Astore and Iran do Espírito Santo extend this exploration into a more physical and spatial dimension. In their works, matter, form and architecture become vehicles for revisiting central themes in de Chirico's oeuvre: from Nunzio's construction of space through the plastic force of matter, to Astore's reflection on the body as an essential structure for interpreting reality and do Espírito Santo's transformation of the everyday object into a monumental and perceptually disorienting presence through variations in scale and the use of unexpected materials.
The theme of landscape emerges through the work of Marinella Senatore and Andrea Francolino, occupying a central place in their respective dialogue with de Chirico. In the new tapestries specially conceived by Marinella Senatore and presented alongside the celebrated Pittore Paesista (c. 1958), landscape emerges as a space of collective construction, shaped by memories, narratives and forms of participation. The dialogue with de Chirico highlights how the symbolic dimension of landscape continues to generate new shared imaginaries.
A complementary perspective on landscape emerges in the site-specific installation conceived by Andrea Francolino for the series Piazze (2023-2025). Through his crepe d'acqua (water cracks), a metaphor for a perpetual cycle that brings together permanence and change, landscape becomes a physical and processual trace of time. Here too, the dialogue with de Chirico reveals the enduring relevance of a vision capable of moving beyond the mere description of the world to convey its poetic and generative dimension.
Finally, in the encounters between iconic works such as Le Muse Inquietanti (1958) and works by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Massimo Vitali return the human figure, and its representation in contemporary culture, to the centre of the exhibition. From the ambiguities of identity explored in Pistoletto's Quadri specchianti (Mirror Paintings) to Vitali's photographs, where the contemporary landscape becomes a stage for a multitude of presences and micro-narratives observed through an analytical, inquisitive and non-judgemental lens, de Chirico's metaphysical legacy continues to engage with new ways of observing reality, confirming the extraordinary vitality of an imaginary world that, more than a century later, continues to resonate with the present.
