Description of the picture:
Metaphysical interior – de Chirico. 1917. 45.8×30.2
During the First World War, in 1917, de Chirico served in the infirmary in Villa del Seminario near Ferrara. There he meets painters, like him, drafted into the army. In those years he makes 6 paintings that made up a series "Metaphysical Interiors", 2nd title of which "Discovery of a loner".
On the canvas – a pile of very naturalistically depicted cookies and various measuring instruments: squares, rulers, frames connected in a very balanced composition. On the right is a mannequin head resembling a tennis racket. In the foreground appears a hyper-realistic colorful cork float. The master combines objects depicted in a realistic manner with schematic, sketchy images. All this happens in a very limited space, which allows the author to hypertrophy a promising reduction. And now objects seem completely unrelated together. These are symbolic signs gathered together to solve the metaphysical tasks of the author. The human presence is indicated by the barely recognizable head of the mannequin. Any life disappears from painting. The space is completely enclosed, only cookies lying on a flat surface create a picture in the picture. Everything becomes an image of the image, and there is a feeling of an inevitable detachment from reality. What used to be space has turned into a bunch of frames, squares and "pictures in pictures". Weight turns into pure geometry – except for the float and dummy head. Angular plans overlap each other and themselves. A typical feature of these metaphysical paintings is the absence of logical connections between objects and strong perspective reductions.
Having created several paintings from a series of so-called metaphysical interiors in 1917, de Chirico leaves this topic and changes the direction of his creative search. However, in 1960, the artist returned to long-standing experiments with a set of objects, while opening up space."