AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Giorgio de Chirico created a series of around 40 paintings in the late 1920s, termed the "uomini-statua-oggetto" works. These paintings combine human, mannequin, statue, and architectural forms into a singular entity. De Chirico used each of these elements in earlier paintings, but these later works combined them differently to suggest a new attitude toward the themes of archeology, painting, and classical culture. His involvements in Paris during the 1920s with the theater and Surrealism played a role in these changes. Many of the paintings reappropriated the use of mannequins, juxtaposition of the real and the unreal, and layering of forms that the Surrealists had borrowed from his earlier work. De Chirico then used the iconography of these paintings in his first novel Hebdomeros, creating a new modem mythology, a very personalized mythology that places his person in the search for answers to the enigmas that continue to perplex human existence.