Giogio De Chirico’s production is full of surprises with oddly associated and disturbing elements. Heterogeneous objects reveal a dreamlike and subconscious world. Classical architectures and railroad stations evoke his childhood spent in Greece, where his father ran the building of a railroad station. Apollinaire called his painting Metaphysics. During the pioneer years of his production he made statues, arcades and desert squares. Vast perspectives, models and then dense interiors give continuity to his reflections. Later De Chirico devoted himself to a more academic theme of literary nature.
The painting O Enigma de um Dia (The One Day’s Enigma) is the work of reference of the metaphysic period. It expresses restlessness, urban metaphors and a meeting of present and past. The painting was bought by Tarsila and Oswald de Andrade in the 1920’s.It combines the geometrization of space through the perspective; the sunset lighting and opaque colors, which provides materiality to the shadows that acquire formal valorization; the statue on the pedestal; the train that passes far away and the two figures, which are only visible through the projection of the shadow of their silhouettes, complete a symbolic seeting.

Elza Ajzenberg