Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) was born to an Italian family living in Greece. His father was an engineer working in the railroad industry. De Chirico studied art during his teenage years and became very interested in the mysterious art of the Symbolists.
He also felt drawn to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, who believed in circular, or recurring, time and questioned the objectivity of truth.
In the 1910s, de Chirico began introducing these ideas into his paintings by exploring the hidden meaning of everyday objects, seeking to uncover the deeper truths concealed beneath their form. Through his paintings, de Chirico engaged with life’s mysteries. He created dreamlike scenes in which each object was laden with veiled significance. He explored the deepest feelings of the human experience through scenes that lacked specificity of time or place. De Chirico’s work eventually influenced André Breton and the Surrealists of the 1920s.
In The Song of Love, de Chirico fills an invented space with incongruous, mundane objects used as expressive symbols of melancholy. The head of a classical Greek statue suggests a myth recurring across time. It appears to be broken, symbolizing a lost civilization. The oversized rubber glove provides an anonymous, unfulfilled human presence, contrasting with the statue and also recalling medicine and surgery.
The green ball and train continue the illogical grouping and add to the eerie layers of meaning and instability.
De Chirico’s careful, seemingly realistic style adds to the anxiety found in the shadowy obscured interiors and unfamiliar scale and grouping of the objects. He distorts the desolate scene with compressed spaces, confusing perspective, and inconsistent shadows. The arches are like those found in Turin, a city associated with Nietzsche’s madness. De Chirico creates a menacing effect that some compare to the emotional state of Europeans, whose world was on the verge of being torn apart in World War I.
In 1919 de Chirico returned to a more traditional style of art, appreciating the skill and legacy of the Renaissance and the Baroque. He continued to paint until his death in 1978, criticizing the direction that modern art took during the 20th century. De Chirico’s late work never received the same acclaim as his early Metaphysical paintings.