The Lamp

The work expresses the sense of loneliness of the contemporary urban condition, of which Sironi was one of the earliest and greatest interpreters in these centuries: an expressionless mannequin is about to undertake usual and modest tasks in the kitchen of a very simple apartment, furnished only by a table, a chair and an electric lamp, which gives the painting its title; an irregular pyramid rests on the table, which proposes in its closed form a reference to the geometric solids of metaphysical paintings.

The mannequin itself, much closer to Carrà’s than to de Chirico’s, displays a crude physicality (the navel, the shoes with heels and stockings on the naked “body”) contradicted by the artificiality of its nature, which emphasizes rather than the mystery of an idol or muse, an existential difficulty without solution, resigned but dignified: an anti-rhetorical metaphor for the human condition in the industrial world.