Giorgio de Chirico. The Last Metaphysics

In this mature phase, de Chirico revisits his most iconic motifs — the Italian squares, the mannequins, the metaphysical interiors, the horses on the shore — but reframes them with a brighter palette, sharper constructions and a new irony, far from the tragic melancholy of his early period. This is the season of Neometaphysics, a term coined in 1970 by the critic Wieland Schmied. Here, the image no longer evokes only mystery and unease: it becomes a conscious play of variations, quotations and transformations. Works such as Ettore e Andromaca, L’astrologo e Sole sul cavalletto embody this balance between thought and lightness, between memory and invention.

Between 1968 and 1978, de Chirico definitively leaves behind his more overtly baroque phase and returns to his original enigmas, reinventing them through new formal rhythms. His irony becomes more pronounced, his colours brighter, the cadence of his compositions more playful — elements that mark a clear distance from the nihilistic vision of the 1910s, when Metaphysics expressed the incomprehensibility and absurdity of existence, in dialogue with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In the final years of his long life, this sentiment softens and becomes the subject of a more measured reflection. With quiet wisdom and an ironic levity, de Chirico revisits the themes of his past, transforming them into more serene images in which a subtle melancholy remains, yet a new clarity prevails — the ultimate form of the metaphysical enigma.