as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p . 232
“

It is most important that we should rid art of all that it has contained of ‘recognizable material’ to date, all familiar subject matter, all traditional ideas, all popular symbols must be banished forthwith. More important still, we must hold enormous faith in ourselves; it is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means ‘absolutely nothing’ from the logical point of view.. ..should speak so strongly in us, evoke such agony or joy, that we feel compelled to paint.

— Giorgio de Chirico

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It is most important that we should rid art of all that it has contained of ‘recognizable material’ to date, all familiar subject matter, all traditional ideas, all popular symbols must be banished forthwith. More important still, we must hold enormous faith in ourselves; it is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means ‘absolutely nothing’ from the logical point of view.. ..should speak so strongly in us, evoke such agony or joy, that we feel compelled to paint." in the context of "as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p . 232" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Giorgio de Chirico" (Quotes of De Chirico: chronologically arranged, after date of the quotes of De Chirico, 1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913: Quotes from: On Mystery and Creation, Giorgio de Chirico - written in Paris, 1913) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Giorgio de Chirico

About Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico (July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978), often known as Népo, was an influential pre-Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the Scuola metafisica art movement.