Figure con bandiera e flauto, 1983

According to Sandro Chia, his work is the “pure creation of an image that reflects exclusively on itself.” An autonomous space within which moralism and rigor are replaced by pleasure and artifice, Chia’s art is the expression of a cultural nomadism that ranges from Renaissance Florence to the protagonists of the modern era, such as Chagall and Picasso, arriving at Cézanne and De Chirico. A “castaway” painter, Chia, like other artists brought together by Achille Bonito Oliva in the Transavanguardia movement, is capable of appropriating any number of artistic techniques; he is the author of a rich figurative repertory, within which a predilection for quotation mixes with sometimes irreverent actions engaging the figures in his works, as in Sinfonia incompiuta (Unfinished Symphony), 1980. [...]