7.5 Metaphysical Painting and Surrealism

Metaphysical Painting

• style of painting developed during the era of World War I by two modern artists, namely Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carra

• includes the use of images designed to convey a sense of mystery.

• unreal lighting, impossible linear perspective, and strange symbolist iconography.

Surrealism

• sought to channel the subconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination.

• Andre Breton - founder

Giorgio de Chirico

• eerie mood and strange artificiality of the cityscapes

• Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure);

• The Disquieting Muses

Rene Magritte

• banal, representational but illusionistic paintings

• The Son of Man

Salvador Dali

• Obsessive themes of eroticism, death, and decay

• The Persistence of memory

Joan Miro

• elaborate, fantastical spaces

• dream-like imagery and their use of biomorphism - shapes are those that resemble organic beings, but that is hard to identify as anything specific

• Harlequin’s Carnival

Frida Kahlo

• famous for her naive/primitive style of painting, notably her self-portraits, depicting the emotional effects of her pain and semi-invalid status as the result of a 1925 traffic accident.

• Fulang-Chang and I

Francis Bacon

• pictures of people screaming or in pain, often portrayed inside bathrooms or cages.

• Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X