MAGDALENA HOLZHEY

Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico (1888-1978) was hugely influential in the early years of the Surrealist movement. His paintings during the teens in Paris, where he moved in 1911, caused such a stir that such important figures as Picasso and Paul Eluard immediately praised them. This phase of his work, which he later termed pittura metafisica (metaphysical painting) was marked by dramatic compositions involving sharp perspective, striking shadows, geometrical planes, voids of space, and a general feeling of anxiety and loneliness; the sense of absurdity evoked by the mannequin-like figures in almost nightmarish landscapes seemed to suggest a Freudian expression of the unconscious. After 1930, De Chirico turned to a more classical style of painting and continued in the same vein for the rest of his career; his later work was widely criticized, especially by the Surrealists who had so admired his early paintings.

Inspired by the innovative use of color in Bauhaus art, Hungarian painter Victor Vasarely (1908-1997) developed his own abstract-geometric visual language, exploring the relationship between pure form and pure color. Vasarely’s experimentation with optical effects in the 1940s and 50s earned him a central role in the evolution of Op Art. By the late 50s and early 60s, he concentrated on the “democratization of art” by no longer producing his works as expensive originals but in large editions of affordable screen prints; this attempt to redefine the position and function of the artist in society was an important first step in the Pop Art movement. Vasarely’s boldly colorful and eye-popping paintings are instantly recognizable and remain entirely modern and relevant today. The author: Magdalena Holzhey studied art history, Italian, and musicology in Berlin and Pisa. She has held academic and curatorial positions in galleries and museums, including the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. She has published on classical modernism and contemporary art and is currently preparing a dissertation on Joseph Beuys.