Eredità delle Troiane nell'arte contemporanea: macerie della postmodernità

In the history of contemporary art, especially in the Nineteenth century, but also in the early Twentieth, the stories told by Euripides in Trojan Women are painted and sculpted by important artists. However, for the most part, these are portraits of the protagonists of the diaspora, an exile that follows a prosopographic criterion, sometimes expressed on robust compositions of ‘pittura di istoria’. The works of Gavin Hamilton, Antonio Canova, Heinrich Fussli and Richard Leighton are remarkable in this sense, while in the early Twentieth century the figures of Hector and Andromaca obsessively inspired De Chirico’s imagination. However, the inheritance of pain and death that the women of Troy carry with them, allows the art historian to broaden his research. The ancient myth is thus combined with the most popular themes in contemporary artistic research, such as the fragility of the female condition, masterly interpreted by Marina Abramovic, with regard to the tragic events of the last century, while the rubble of the war is seen in its sacred silence by Anselm Kiefer.