Portrait of Giorgio De Chirico 2018

Curator: Welcome. Here we have Corrado Zani’s 2018 acrylic impasto, “Portrait of Giorgio De Chirico”. Editor: It's immediate and kind of…craggy. All that textured paint really makes the face feel lived-in, doesn’t it? A landscape etched by time. Curator: The painting directly references the renowned Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico, whose enigmatic, pre-surrealist style shaped the course of 20th-century art. Editor: I love how Zani's used these thick daubs of paint to almost sculpt De Chirico's face. It’s a tactile experience, you almost want to reach out and touch it. It's bold, not trying to be photorealistic. More interested in capturing the essence of the man, I suppose. Curator: That texture is characteristic of impasto, which creates a three-dimensional effect. This contrasts with traditional smooth portraits and marks this work as modern. We can consider its ties to Italian Modernism and how those movements challenged conventional forms of representation. Editor: The colours, too, are quite interesting. It's a limited palette, but within it there's a real dynamism. I feel melancholy here and some underlying stubbornness—that face has seen things and has made peace with it, I think. I appreciate portraits that have character. Curator: The use of such impasto in the contemporary art world brings forth a new perception on portraiture as it merges painting and sculpture. It also gives an interesting juxtaposition between an art-historical subject painted in a completely modern technique. Editor: Right! This isn’t just a likeness; it’s an interpretation, a conversation across time, in a very specific style, so maybe it serves as an hommage to a mentor or influential figure, rather than just a literal likeness of another person. Curator: Precisely. That positions it within a larger artistic dialogue. Zani reinterprets the past through a modern lens. Thank you. Editor: It's been great; these sorts of "meetings" bring another dimension of depth to pieces and hopefully allow for personal resonance, too.