Analysis of Giorgio De Chirico 

For my analysis of my first artist, Giorgio De Chirico, I recreated a section from his painting “The Uncertainty of The Poet.” I did a pencil drawing of the figure shown in this piece of work, in order to grasp a better understanding of Chirico’s use of layering in his paintings. From my response to his work, I have found that his use of tone helps to build up his paintings, giving the supposedly still life statue life like qualities, the classic headless figure (supposedly representing Aphrodite) seems far too detailed and twisted for it to be just a statue. I think this creates an atmosphere of wonder about the painting, what was Chirico trying to do here? Naturally, the style of the painting could well fit into the Surrealist movement, although Giorgio was a pre – Surrealist artist, we can definitely see his work changing from his earlier pieces. 

I then made a response to “The Two Masks”, I did this by focusing on half of the painting. I recreated this using oil paints, however just on paper as opposed to on canvas. From this response I found that Chirico’s use of colour contrasts to other sections of the painting, again giving me insight as to how he layered his paintings using colour – red next to white next to the blue of the sky, and also again by his use of tone; ultimately giving his work depth, creating texture through his methods of painting. We could perhaps say that this painting reflects the lives of De Chirico and his Brother, Andrea, showing both of their accomplishments as enigmatic. 

My final response to Giorgio de Chirico’s work is a reproduction of a section from Hector and Andromache. My response to this piece was completed using water colour pencils, in order to show the washy texture of the original painting. I think that using different medias to those that Chirico used has helped me to gain understanding of how he created depth, tone and even shape in his work, allowing me to realise how talented the artist was in order to create this through just using oil paints – which is what I aim to do next; to create pieces showing depth, texture and tone using only oil paints. Hector and Andromache could have many interpretations, however it made me feel that Chirico was trying to express moving on from Cubist ways or producing art – we see Hector made from triangular shapes, where as Andromache is a very flowing character. We could even say that Chirico is possibly saying the changes people can make for love – Andromache being the wife of Hector.