Alberto Savinio is one of the least classifiable figures in the context of the Italian artistic twentieth century: a composer, essayist, painter, but also a dramatist and director, his work springs from an “ironic” relationship, of romantic source, with all forms of art, which he submits to a “rewriting” (in a broad sense) in order to create aesthetic syntheses  in which the timelessness of classical mythology, which is its starting point, and of everything that constitutes the genetic heritage of European culture, are mixed with modern civilization (considered as a different repetition of the Hellenistic age). Savinio intends to bring out a subjectivity, an “I”, free from any ideological constraint, and in itself “out of time” and predisposed to a “ghostly” (fantasmica) and “metaphysical” synthesis of multiple aesthetic materials. A tendence which can be seen in the paintings by his brother Giorgio de Chirico, whom he inspired in the “metaphysical” period, and, from the twenties, in his own painting.

Roberto Cresti insegna Storia dell’arte contemporanea e Storia delle arti del Novecento presso il Dipar­timento di Studi Umanistici della Università di Macerata. Si occupa dei rapporti fra arti visive, filosofia e letteratura, con particolare riferimento ai secoli XIX e XX. È attualmente Direttore artistico del Museo del Novecento di Palazzo Ricci a Macerata, per il quale ha curato, nell’anno in corso, le mostre Futuro interiore. Wladimiro Tulli e il Novecento di Palazzo Ricci, Quattro nel ‘Novecento’ e i relativi cataloghi.