Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico was born in Volos in 1888. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1903 to 1906 and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1906 to 1909. There, he encountered the art of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1910 he moved to Florence and the following year settled in Paris, where his brother Andrea, the writer and painter known as Alberto Savinio, was living. He first exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1912 and the Salon des Indépendants in 1913. In 1919 he held his first solo exhibition of metaphysical works at the Casa d’ Arte Bragaglia in Rome, a period when he worked closely with the circle of the journal "Valori Plastici", which promoted the principles of the "Scuola Metafisica". He had his first solo show in Paris in 1922 at the gallery of Paul Guillaume, and in 1925 he briefly exhibited with the Surrealists at Galerie Pierre before breaking with them. Roger Vitrac published a monograph on the artist in 1927, and in 1929 de Chirico published his prose work "Hebdomeros" in French and collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev on the Ballets Russes production of Le Bal. He lived in New York from 1936 to 1938 and in 1941 presented his first exhibition of sculpture at the Galleria Barbaroux in Milan. His "Memoirs of My Life" was published in 1945. From 1947 he lived permanently in Rome. In 1955 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, published a major monograph on his work by James Thrall Soby. During the 1960s he also produced prints, sculpture, and jewelry. A major retrospective was held at Milan’s Palazzo Reale in 1970, and in 1973 he visited Greece for the filming of the documentary "Il Mistero dell’ Infinito". The following year he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Over his career, he illustrated editions of Jean Cocteau and Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as the "Apocalypse" and the "Iliad". Regarded as one of the foremost painters of the twentieth century, de Chirico created still lifes, portraits, and urban landscapes in which mannequins, statues, trains, shadows, and everyday objects appear in unexpected juxtapositions. He died in Rome in 1978. The Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico was established in 1986.