Word: chiricos
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Painter Giorgio de Chirico may be considered old hat at 62, but he wears his bowler with a difference. As the once-reigning genius of Italy's avant-garde "metaphysical school," De Chirico foreshadowed surrealism before World War I, then abandoned such enigmatic art to peddle a perfectly understandable brand of neoclassicism...
...painter, De Chirico long ago lost his punch; as a peddler, he still has plenty of push. In June, the superannuated master proved it with an eye-catching ad for Fiat automobiles (TIME, July 3). Last week he was again honking his own horn at a conservative sideshow to Venice's vast international roundup of modern art, the "Biennale" (TIME, June...
...Chirico's "Anti-Biennale" consisted of 79 paintings by himself and a handful of his friends. They kept their show open evenings, drew crowds of tourists and even an encouraging number of buyers. Exponents of modern art were getting "restless and worried," De Chirico trumpeted, "because of my activities to create a renaissance in painting that will restore art to its true masterfulness and beauty . . . With great strides the day is coming when this horrible bestiality called modern art ... will give up its soul to the devil...
...Fiat's technical-minded directors complained that De Chirico had made their car's hood too long and its body too short. Besides, the whole thing was out of perspective. Nonsense, cried De Chirico: "I did not want to follow the usual line of ad painting based on cubism, abstractionism and all the other isms. I always make it a point to paint things precisely as they...
Last week the directors gave in. They placed an order for 20,000 posters and 100,000 postcard reproductions of the painting, duly dispatched a Fiat "1400" to Painter de Chirico in return...