Giorgio de Chirico “The Nostalgia of the Poet” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice

Nostalgia of the Poet Painting - Oil and charcoal on canvas (89.7 x 40.7 cm) 1914

Giorgio de Chirico's painting, “The Nostalgia of the Poet”, painted in 1914, refers to his friend Guillaume Apollinaire.

Here we are faced with an accumulation of symbols of this "preformatted" world around us.

Many forms reproduced in the same way, resulting from the world announced at the beginning of the twentieth century.

On top of the picture, a metal cake pan looking like a fish seems ready to swallow the symbol under his mouth.

A symbol that also refers to the hook of our parameterized lives.

On the right, a tailor's dummy with dotted lines looks preformatted like the journey of our lives in the service of a productive goal.

Finally, in the foreground, the poet with a plaster head comes out of the mould with his black glasses that hide his eyes and distort this world he rejects.

Everything here is frozen, planned, determined, programmed, hence the nostalgia of the poet!

Nostalgia of the Poet