Tawhiao and De Chirico

 Tracey Tawhiao and Giorgio de Chirico are two artist models we researched for our Art 1.1 research. 

Tawhiao and de Chirico's use of grid

Tawhiao uses the grids from the newspaper and composes her artwork that way. Because a newspaper is typically divided into sections, Tawhiao's work also does the same. Parts of her artworks are often divided into boxes and arranged orderly in straight lines. De Chirico's art doesn't use grids per se but focuses more on perspective. However, this isn't to say that the use of a grid isn't visible at all in his artworks; certain point in the drawing can be connected to one another through the use of a grid. In the example below, the base of the tower in the background aligns with the grid placed on top of the artwork. These two techniques aren't the same thing, but both work well in their own way to execute the composition in an artwork.

Tracey Tawhiao's use of grid example:

Artwork name: 'Amazon'

De Chirico's use of grid and perspective:

Artwork name: 'Piazza d'Italia'

The two artists' Kaupapa

Tracey Tawhiao's artworks represent Māori and Pacific people living in New Zealand present day and are subversive by painting traditional Māori art and symbols to represent their culture over newspapers, which is a western concept. 

De Chirico's art often depicted deserted piazzas. He is known for creating the metaphysical art style together with Carlo Carrà. During this period, he used brighter colours and hard-to-interpret landscapes in his artwork. His metaphysical artworks influenced the painters of the Surrealist movement that took place in the 1920s. 

Sofia Minson

Sofia Minson doesn't use grids often, but rather patterns for her artworks. In the example attached below, most of the artwork is made up of triangles together. Because the visible lines present are diagonal, the use of a grid isn't really present. We can, however, see hints of a grid used when we look at the right horizontal line at the foot of the mountain. If we look closely, we can see sections of triangles lining up with each other on the same imaginary horizontal line, so this could be evidence of the use of a grid.

Artwork name: 'Krishna Aoraki'