Giorgio de Chirico

Volos 1888 — Rome 1978

Famous for his metaphysical paintings with numerous Classical allusions, Giorgio de Chirico makes a philosophical reflection in every single work, which serves to express the idea.

Born in Volos, where his father engineered the construction of railroads in Greece, his childhood and early adolescence spent in Greece left him with a constant nostalgia for Classical style, which he perfected during his studies at the Academy under Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger in Munich.

Following brief periods of residence in Milan and Florence, De Chirico moved to Paris in 1910, living there for years that proved to be decisive in his career. In Paris, he met artists and intellectuals the likes of Apollinaire, Picasso, and Max Jacob. Returning to Italy when the Great War broke out, he continued developing his original approach, suspended between dream and reality, defined Metaphysical Art. In the early 1920s, De Chirico became part of the Return to Order movement, juxtaposing the history of art against history in general.

His Notte di Pericle (1927), a part of the Foundation Collection, signals a return to Metaphysical Art’s visionary dimension and greater proximity to meditation on the world of the Ancients. This tendency of his would only subsequently strengthen, to the point of landing him in an outdated, anti-historic and nostalgic landscape after the Second World War based on the values of old-fashioned painting in which he attempted to return to the themes of his youth and Metaphysical Art.