Giorgio De Chirico

Calligrammes, by Guillaume Apollinaire and Giorgio De Chirico

1930

The progenitor of metaphysical painting — a dreamlike, realist style embracing sharp contrasts, sculpted forms and odd juxtapositions — Giorgio De Chirico profoundly influenced many Surrealist artists of his time. His early sculptures and paintings explored the complexities of the mind and reflected his affinity for contemporary European philosophy and Freudian psychoanalysis. Even though the metaphysical movement lasted only a brief time, he left a strong impression on such legendary surrealists as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and André Breton. 

De Chirico was born in Volos, Greece, to Italian parents. His father was a Sicilian baron and engineer in charge of constructing a railroad in Greece at the time of his son’s birth. In his late teens, De Chirico studied art at various institutions in Athens and Florence. After his father died, in 1905, he enrolled in the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Here, he discovered the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer that would help to shape his future works.

In 1909, De Chirico moved to Milan and then to Florence a year later, where he began experimenting with what would become his metaphysical style. After moving again, this time to Paris in 1911, his brother Alberto Savinio helped him get several small exhibitions of his work that eventually were noticed by Pablo Picasso and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire — and his paintings began to sell.

De Chirico was conscripted into the Italian Army in 1915 but was diagnosed with a mental disorder — likely anxiety — and sent to a military hospital where he met fellow artist Carlo Carrà. Together, they devised the metaphysical painting style that consisted of fantastical images of low-lit town squares uninhabited except for marble sculptures, dummies and stretched shadows, purposefully portrayed with flattened surfaces and warped perspectives.

By the 1920s, De Chirico’s style began incorporating Renaissance and Baroque elements, and later works, from the 1960s and ’70s, brought together neoclassicism, Surrealism and ancient mythology. His art is in major museum collections across the world, including the Tate Museum of Modern Art, in London; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, in Venice; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.

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