PITTURA METAFISICA

Pittura Metafisica:
Pittura Metafisica (Ital. for "metaphysic painting") denotes a style that came up in Italy as early as in 1911/12, lasting up into the 1920s. The term originates from the main master and founding father of Pittura Metafisica, Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). Artists such as Carlo Carrà (1881-1966) and Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) followed his example around 1917/18. 
A fundamental feature of the Pittura Metafisica, in its literal sense, is the depiction of the object's "super-natural" features (Greek "metá" = beyond; "phýsis" = nature), the object's content beyond its visible features. These ideas had clearly been influenced by Giorgio de Chirico's younger brother Andrea, who was working as a writer and painter under the pseudonym Alberto Savinio. Philosophical concepts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer also occupied fundamental roles in this context.
The painters of the Pittura Metafisica created coulisse-like and perspectively exaggerated views that seemed like dreams filled with over-sharply modeled figures and objects, which have been taken from their original contexts and rearranged in new and strange relations. Man is also treated as an object - as "manichino", a faceless jointed doll, or as a construct of stereometric basic forms. Isolation, alienation, inexplicability and mysteriousness coin the atmosphere of the calm, motionless Pittura Metafisica that wanted to be less a way of painting than a means of observing. 
In their concept of materiality, but also in terms of style, the artists of the Pittura Metafisica referred to the solemn and strict austerity of the Early Renaissance (Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello). The simultaneosuly upcoming dynamic Futurism can be perceived as a counter movement to the Pittura Metafisica - Carlo Carrà, up until 1915 one of the leading artists of Futurism, explained his turn to the Pittura Metafisica with the rediscovery of the "principio italiano", which was prevailing in Renaissance.
The Pittura Metafisica had effects beyond the borders of Italy, especially on New Oobjectivity and Surrealism, which both came up up a little later. 
Metaphysical art (Italian: Pittura metafisica), style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 in the works of the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began with Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality. De Chirico, his younger brother Alberto Savinio, and Carrà formally established the school and its principles in 1917. 

While Futurism staunchly rejected the past, other modern movements identified a nostalgia for the now faded Classical grandeur of Italy as a major influence in their art. Giorgio de Chirico first developed the style that he later called Metaphysical Painting while in Milan. It was in the more sedate surroundings of Florence, however, that he subsequently developed his emphasis on strange, eerie spaces, based upon the Italian piazza. Many of de Chirico's works from his Florence period evoke a sense of dislocation between past and present, between the individual subject and the space he or she inhabits. These works soon drew the attention of other artists such as Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi.

In his painting Turin Melancholy (1915), for example, he illustrated just such a square, using unnaturally sharp contrasts of light and shadow that lend an aura of poignant but vaguely threatening mystery to the scene. The arcades in this painting, as well as the deep perspectival space and dark-toned sky, are pictorial devices typical of de Chirico’s strange, evocative works. He gave his paintings enigmatic titles — such as The Nostalgia of the Infinite (1913–14), The Philosopher’s Conquest (1914), and The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) — that contribute to their cryptic effect. Other Metaphysical painters includedFilippo de Pisis, and Mario Sironi.

In 1917, in the midst of the First World War, Carrà and de Chirico spent time in Ferarra where they further developed the Metaphysical Painting style that was later to attract the attention of the French Surrealists.

The Metaphysical school proved short-lived; it came to an end about 1920 because of dissension between de Chirico and Carrà over who had founded the group.

SECTION D'OR

Section D'or:

The movement began with an exhibition at the Galerie La Boetie in Paris in 1912, which was also accompanied by publication of the treatise Du Cubisme by Metzinger and Gleizes. In addition to featuring works by the Duchamp brothers, Raymond Duchamp-Villon,Jacques Villon and Marcel Duchamp, other exhibitors included artists such as Archipenko, Roger de La Fresnaye, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Jean Marchand and Francis Picabia, among others. The opening address was given by Guillaume Apollinaire.

The group's title was suggested by Jacques Villon, after reading a 1910 translation of Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura by Joséphin Péladan. Peladan attached great mystical significance to the golden section (French: Section d'Or), and other similar geometric configurations. For Villon, this symbolised his belief in order and the significance of mathematical proportions, because it reflected patterns and relationships occurring in nature.

The group adopted its name to distinguish itself from the narrower definition of Cubism developed earlier by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in the Montmartre quarter of Paris.

The onset of World War I in 1914 largely ended the group's activities, which had never been much more than a loose association.

he year 1912 marked the passage from Analytic Cubism to Synthetic Cubism and witnessed the movement's widespread propagation. Gleizes and Metzinger published the first doctrinal work devoted to the new movement. In the course of the autumn, the historic exhibition of the Section d'Or at the La Boétie Gallery in Paris gathered together in one vast collection all Cubism's adherents -- with the sole exception of its two creators, Braque and Picasso, who showed their works only at the Kahnweiler Gallery. The exhibition included not only Juan Gris, Léger, Gleizes, Metzinger, Lhote, Delaunay, Marcoussis and Roger de La Fresnaye, but also Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Dumont, and Agero. Many of these painters retained only the superficial appearance of Cubism, the geometrical fragmentation of the painted surface, and later turned in opposite directions, some going back to traditional formulae, while others were borne away by abstract currents or Dada experiments, but the unity of their search was based on a common admiration for Cézanne and his constructive lesson. The initiative and the title of this exhibition, which created a considerable stir, were due to the painter and engraver Jacques Villon. In his studio at Puteaux, near Paris, a number of artists passionately interested in problems of rhythm and proportion met on Sunday afternoons, among them the two theoreticians of Cubism, Gleizes and Metzinger, Picabia, Léger La Fresnaye, as well as the poets Paul Fort, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Jean Cocteau and Joachim Gasquet. Villon developed his theory of vision by pyramids, taken from Leonardo da Vinci, and suggested during these meetings the title of 'Section d'Or', borrowed from the treatise of the Bolognese monk Luca Pacioli, The Divine Proportion, published in Venice in 1509 and illustrated by Leonardo himself. Formulated by Vitruvius and taken up again during the Renaissance, the golden section or divine proportion (or gate of harmony) is the ideal relation between two magnitudes, expressed numerically as and demonstrated in many masterpieces of different arts, applied consciously or, more often, by instinct. 'There is,' Voltaire said, 'a hidden geometry in all the arts that the hand produces.' Although the golden section was not the only constant to which the Cubists referred for the mathematical organization of their canvas, it reflected the profound need for order and measure that they felt more through sensibility and reason than as a result of calculation. Distorted by the incomprehension or bad faith of critics, the 'Section d'Or' exhibition met with immense avant-garde success in France and abroad, and constituted a general rally under the sign of Cézannian architecture and geometrical discipline.

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire (French pronunciation: [ɡijom apɔliˈnɛʁ]; Rome, 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918, Paris) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother.

Among the foremost poets of the early 20th century, he is credited with coining the word Surrealism and writing one of the earliest works described as surrealist, the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917, used as the basis for a 1947 opera). Two years after being wounded in World War I, he died in theSpanish flu pandemic of 1918 at age 38.

DER BLAUE REITER

Der Blaue Reiter:

Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Bloch and others formed the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting Last Judgement from an exhibition. Der Blaue Reiter lacked an artistic manifesto, but it was centered around Kandinsky and Marc. Paul Klee was also involved.

Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist; however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism, as well as the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France. As a result of their encounters with cubist, fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction.The name of the movement is the title of a painting that Kandinsky created in 1903, but it is unclear whether it is the origin of the name of the movement, as Professor Klaus Lankheit learned that the title of the painting had been overwritten. Kandinsky wrote 20 year later that the name is derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky's love of riders, combined with both love of the color blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality: the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art).

Der Blaue Reiter organized exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 that toured Germany. They also published an almanac featuring contemporary, primitive and folk art, along with children's paintings. In 1913 they exhibited in the first German Herbstsalon.

The group was disrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Franz Marc and August Macke were killed in combat. Wassily Kandinsky,Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky were forced to move back to Russia because of their Russian citizenship. There were also differences in opinion within the group. As a result, Der Blaue Reiter was short-lived, lasting for only three years from 1911 to 1914.

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky : 16 December [O.S. 4 December] 1866 – 13 December 1944) was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—he began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.