Enigmatic Dimensions

The work of Giorgio de Chirico, Victor Brauner and Francis Picabia is often tricky to unravel and poses more questions than it answers. Their work presents a symbolic hall of mirrors, either metaphysical or surreal, which hang between structure and abyss, form and dissolution.

There are works that seem to wait, patient and silent, to be traversed by the gaze. They do not seek answers; rather, they suspend them. There are three extraordinary examples of that enigmatic dimension which runs through the history of 20th-century art, featured in the upcoming Modern Art auction.

The first is a Piazza d’Italia by Giorgio de Chirico. A piece that fully restores the metaphysical vertigo of his silent architectures and motionless figures, plunging the viewer into an atmosphere we might call “Aionic”. Aión, the eternal time, as opposed to chronological (chrónos) and existential (kairós) time, stretches here like a still veil. The equestrian monument does not celebrate any human victory but stands as a simulacrum of a time that knows no change. In the distance, the chimney hints at a remote industry, an ambiguous signal between the classical past and industrial modernity. And those two figures, cast in long shadows, seem motionless for eternity, held in a perpetual twilight that dissolves any temporal certainty. Not a moment to live, but a time to contemplate, with no beginning or end.

Of an entirely different character, yet no less disorienting, is the work of Victor Brauner Vertige. A painting that eludes linear deciphering logic, a visual apparatus that seems both mechanical and organic at the same time. A central figure, which could evoke a dystopian piano, is inscribed within what seems to be a circular structure – perhaps an accelerator, or a visionary contraption with no apparent purpose. One senses the echo of Matta’s compositions, with the same tension between form and dissolution, between construction and abyss. The whole is unsettling: Brauner’s machine does not play music; it perhaps evokes a language we can no longer read. It is a work that, like a disillusioned oracle, offers only questions.

Closing the triptych is a Composition abstraite by Francis Picabia, dated 1947. In this late stage of his research, Picabia plays with the limits of abstraction, but never fully relinquishes a background of recognizability. The forms reveal themselves for an instant, only to vanish behind a curtain of colour and line. In this canvas, we can glimpse – or perhaps only imagine – the eruption of a volcano at night, a sudden glow that illuminates a dark landscape. Or perhaps it is an erotic apparition, one of those images that surface in the unconscious and withdraw before thought can fix them. Faces, human profiles, primitive idols seem to emerge, but they are difficult to grasp: their truth is a reflection that slips away just as we think we have caught it. In this painting, Picabia confirms himself as a master of dissimulation: every revelation is a game of mirrors.

These three works share a common characteristic: they hold a secret that refuses to be unveiled. And perhaps it is precisely this that gives them their strength, their irresistible charm. They never fully yield, they do not seek answers, nor do they offer secure footholds. They remain there, guarding an enigma that renews itself with every glance, as though the viewer is called not to decipher, but to linger, to dwell in that suspended moment where everything becomes a question.