Urban metaphysics versus metropolitan dynamisms: The Italian vision before the first world war

Abstract

Urban modernity, a theme that does not interest cubist painters-with the exception of Delaunay, who was influenced by Futurism-becomes for De Chirico, quite differently from his German contemporaries Kirchner and Grosz, the centre point for a reflection on a new aesthetics. De Chirico composes his cityscapes through a language only seemingly derived from antiquity, but in fact hiding within its forms, like an optical illusion, the potential for a revelation of a truly contemporary vision. In this sense, he distances himself from the futurists who experiment with a scientific lexicon to reinvent painterly practice but entertain its possible expression only conceptually.