After 1919, he became a critic of modern art, studied traditional painting techniques, and later worked in aneoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work. In 2018 it was suggested that de Chirico may have suffered fromAlice in Wonderland syndrome.
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico was born inVolos, Greece, as the eldest son of Gemma Cervetto andEvaristo de Chirico.[4] His mother was aGenoesebaroness[5] ofGreek origins fromSmyrna,[6] and his father aSicilianbarone[3][7] ofGreek ancestry (the Kyriko or Chirico family was of Greek origin, having moved fromRhodes toPalermo in 1523 together with 4,000 otherGreek Catholic families).[6][8][9] De Chirico's family was in Greece at the time of his birth because his father, an engineer, was in charge of the construction of a railroad.[10] His younger brother, Andrea Francesco Alberto, became a famous writer, painter and composer under the pseudonymAlberto Savinio.
De Chirico returned to Italy in the summer of 1909 and spent six months in Milan. By 1910, he was beginning to paint in a simpler style with flat, anonymous surfaces. At the beginning of 1910, he moved to Florence where he painted the first of his 'Metaphysical Town Square' series,The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, after the revelation he felt inPiazza Santa Croce. He also paintedThe Enigma of the Oracle while in Florence. In July 1911 he spent a few days in Turin on his way to Paris. De Chirico was profoundly moved by what he called the 'metaphysical aspect' ofTurin, especially the architecture of its archways and piazzas.
The paintings de Chirico produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, are characterized by haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were motionless cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited bymannequin-like hybrid figures.
De Chirico's conception of Metaphysical art was strongly influenced by his reading of Nietzsche, whose style of writing fascinated de Chirico with its suggestions of unseen auguries beneath the appearance of things.[14] De Chirico found inspiration in the unexpected sensations that familiar places or things sometimes produced in him: In a manuscript of 1909 he wrote of the "host of strange, unknown and solitary things that can be translated into painting ... What is required above all is a pronounced sensitivity."[15] Metaphysical art combined everyday reality with mythology, and evoked inexplicable moods of nostalgia, tense expectation, and estrangement.[16] The picture space often featured illogical, contradictory, and drastically receding perspectives. Among de Chirico's most frequent motifs were arcades, of which he wrote: "The Roman arcade is fate ... its voice speaks in riddles which are filled with a peculiarly Roman poetry".[17]
De Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea. Through his brother he metPierre Laprade, a member of the jury at theSalon d'Automne, where he exhibited three of his works:Enigma of the Oracle,Enigma of an Afternoon andSelf-Portrait. During 1913 he exhibited paintings at theSalon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne; his work was noticed byPablo Picasso andGuillaume Apollinaire, and he sold his first painting,The Red Tower. His time in Paris also resulted in the production of de Chirico'sAriadne. In 1914, through Apollinaire, he met the art dealerPaul Guillaume, with whom he signed a contract for his artistic output.
Le mauvais génie d'un roi (The Evil Genius of a King), 1914–15, oil on canvas, 61 × 50.2 cm,Museum of Modern ArtThe Seer, 1914–15, oil on canvas, 89.6 × 70.1 cm,Museum of Modern ArtGreat Metaphysical Interior, 1917, oil on canvas, 95.9 × 70.5 cm,Museum of Modern ArtSelf-portrait (Autoritratto), 1920, oil on wood, 50.2 x 39.5 cm,Pinakothek der Moderne
At the outbreak of World War I, he returned to Italy. Upon his arrival in May 1915, he enlisted in the army, but he was considered unfit for work and assigned to the hospital at Ferrara. The shop windows of that town inspired a series of paintings that feature biscuits, maps, and geometric constructions in indoor settings.[18] In Ferrara he met withCarlo Carrà and together they founded thepittura metafisica movement.[13] He continued to paint, and in 1918, he transferred to Rome. Starting from 1918, his work was exhibited extensively in Europe.
In November 1919, de Chirico published an article inValori plastici entitled "The Return of Craftsmanship", in which he advocated a return to traditional methods and iconography.[19] This article heralded an abrupt change in his artistic orientation, as he adopted a classicizing manner inspired by such old masters asRaphael andSignorelli, and became part of the post-warreturn to order in the arts. He became an outspoken opponent ofmodern art.[20]
In the early 1920s, the Surrealist writerAndré Breton discovered one of de Chirico's metaphysical paintings on display in Guillaume's Paris gallery, and was enthralled.[21] Numerous young artists who were similarly affected by de Chirico's imagery became the core of the Paris Surrealist group centered around Breton. In 1924 de Chirico visited Paris and was accepted into the group, although the surrealists were severely critical of his post-metaphysical work.[22]
De Chirico met and married his first wife, the Russian ballerina Raissa Gurievich (1894-1979) in 1925, and together they moved to Paris.[23] His relationship with the Surrealists grew increasingly contentious, as they publicly disparaged his new work; by 1926 he had come to regard them as "cretinous and hostile".[24] They soon parted ways in acrimony. In 1928 he held his first exhibition in New York City and shortly afterwards, London. He wrote essays on art and other subjects, and in 1929 published a novel entitledHebdomeros, the Metaphysician. Also in 1929, he madestage designs forSergei Diaghilev.[13]
De Chirico in 1970, photographed byPaolo Monti. Fondo Paolo Monti,BEIC
In 1930, de Chirico met his second wife, Isabella Pakszwer Far (1909–1990), a Russian, with whom he would remain for the rest of his life. Together they moved to Italy in 1932 and to the US in 1936,[13] finally settling in Rome in 1944. In 1948 he bought a house near theSpanish Steps; now theGiorgio de Chirico House Museum, a museum dedicated to his work.
In 1939, he adopted a neo-Baroque style influenced byRubens.[23]This artistic phase, which lasted until the late 60s, is sometimes referred to as the 'Baroque season'. During this time, de Chirico draws inspiration from artists such asTintoretto,Dürer,Raphael,Delacroix andRenoir. The artist, far from willing to achieverealism in his paintings, strives to create images charged with myths and visions, for an art that is still literally "metaphysical", beyond reality. During these years, De Chirico also studied and rediscovered the painting techniques adopted by old masters, such as Titian: "So I started doing copies of the old masters. In Rome... in Florence... and then I also got interested in their techniques, I consulted numerous treatises on painting, both ancient and modern."[25]
De Chirico's later paintings never received the same critical praise as did those from his metaphysical period. He resented this, as he thought his later work was better and more mature. He nevertheless produced backdated "self-forgeries" both to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of revenge—retribution for the critical preference for his early work.[26] He also denounced many paintings attributed to him in public and private collections as forgeries.[27] In 1945, he published his memoirs.[13]
He remained extremely prolific even as he approached his 90th year.[28] During the 1960s,Massimiliano Fuksas worked in his atelier. In 1974 de Chirico was elected to theFrench Académie des Beaux-Arts. He died in Rome on 20 November 1978. In 1992 his remains were moved to the Roman church ofSan Francesco a Ripa.[29]
De Chirico's best-known works are the paintings of his metaphysical period. In them he developed a repertoire of motifs—empty arcades, towers, elongated shadows, mannequins, and trains among others—that he arranged to create "images of forlornness and emptiness" that paradoxically also convey a feeling of "power and freedom".[30] According to Sanford Schwartz, de Chirico—whose father was a railroad engineer—painted images that suggest "the way you take in buildings and vistas from the perspective of a train window. His towers, walls, and plazas seem to flash by, and you are made to feel the power that comes from seeing things that way: you feel you know them more intimately than the people do who live with them day by day."[31]
could condense voluminous feeling through metaphor and association ... InThe Joy of Return, 1915, de Chirico's train has once more entered the city ... a bright ball of vapor hovers directly above its smokestack. Perhaps it comes from the train and is near us. Or possibly it is a cloud on the horizon, lit by the sun that never penetrates the buildings, in the last electric blue silence of dusk. It contracts the near and the far, enchanting one's sense of space. Early de Chiricos are full of such effects. Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est? ("What shall I love if not the enigma?")—this question, inscribed by the young artist on his self-portrait in 1911, is their subtext.[32]
In this, he resembles his more representational American contemporary,Edward Hopper: their pictures' low sunlight, their deep and often irrational shadows, their empty walkways and portentous silences creating an enigmatic visual poetry.[33]
De Chirico won praise for his work almost immediately from the writerGuillaume Apollinaire, who helped to introduce his work to the later Surrealists. De Chirico strongly influenced the Surrealist movement:Yves Tanguy wrote how one day in 1922 he saw one of de Chirico's paintings in an art dealer's window, and was so impressed by it he resolved on the spot to become an artist—although he had never even held a brush. Other Surrealists who acknowledged de Chirico's influence includeMax Ernst,Salvador Dalí, andRené Magritte, who described his first sighting of de Chirico'sThe Song of Love as "one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyessaw thought for the first time."[34] Other artists as diverse asGiorgio Morandi,Carlo Carrà,Paul Delvaux,Carel Willink,Harue Koga,Philip Guston,Andy Warhol andMark Kostabi were influenced by de Chirico.
De Chirico's style has influenced several filmmakers, particularly in the 1950s through 1970s. The visual style of the French animated filmLe Roi et l'oiseau, byPaul Grimault andJacques Prévert, was influenced by de Chirico's work, primarily via Tanguy, a friend of Prévert.[35] The visual style ofValerio Zurlini's filmThe Desert of the Tartars (1976) was influenced by de Chirico's work.[36]Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian film director, also said he was influenced by de Chirico. Some comparison can be made to the long takes in Antonioni's films from the 1960s, in which the camera continues to linger on desolate cityscapes populated by a few distant figures, or none at all, in the absence of the film's protagonists.
In 1958,Riverside Records used a reproduction of de Chirico's 1915 paintingThe Seer (originally painted as a tribute to French poetArthur Rimbaud) as the cover art for pianistThelonious Monk's live albumMisterioso. The choice was made to capitalize on Monk's popularity with intellectual and bohemian fans from venues such as theFive Spot Café, where the album had been recorded, but Monk biographerRobin Kelley later observed deeper connections between the painting and the pianist's music; Rimbaud had "called on the artist to be a seer in order to plumb the depths of the unconscious in the quest for clairvoyance ... The one-eyed figure represented the visionary. The architectural forms and the placement of the chalkboard evoked the unity of art and science—a perfect symbol for an artist whose music has been called 'mathematical.'"[37]
Writers who have appreciated de Chirico includeJohn Ashbery, who has calledHebdomeros "probably ... the finest [major work of Surrealist fiction]."[38] Several ofSylvia Plath's poems are influenced by de Chirico.[39] In his bookBlizzard of OneMark Strand included a poetic diptych called "Two de Chiricos": "The Philosopher's Conquest" and "The Disquieting Muses".
The cover art ofNew Order's single "Thieves Like Us" is based on de Chirico's paintingThe Evil Genius of a King.[47]
The music video for theDavid Bowie song "Loving the Alien" was partly influenced by de Chirico. Bowie was an admirer of his genderless tailors' dummies.[48]
Melanconia,The Enigma of the Arrival andLa Matinée Angoissante (1912)
The Soothsayers Recompense,The Red Tower,Ariadne,The Awakening of Ariadne,The Uncertainty of the Poet,La Statua Silenziosa,The Anxious Journey,Melancholy of a Beautiful Day,Le Rêve Transformé, andSelf-Portrait (1913)
The Anguish of Departure (begun in 1913),Portrait ofGuillaume Apollinaire,The Nostalgia of the Poet,L'Énigme de la fatalité,Gare Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure),The Song of Love,The Enigma of a Day,The Philosopher's Conquest,The Child's Brain,The Philosopher and the Poet,Still Life: Turin in Spring,Piazza d'Italia (Autumn Melancholy), andMelancholy and Mystery of a Street (1914)
The Evil Genius of a King (begun in 1914),The Seer (orThe Prophet),Piazza d'Italia,The Double Dream of Spring,The Purity of a Dream,Two Sisters (The Jewish Angel) andThe Duo (1915)
Metaphysical Interior with Large Factory andThe Faithful Servitor (both began in 1916),The Great Metaphysician,Ettore e Andromaca,Metaphysical Interior,Geometric Composition with Landscape and Factory andGreat Metaphysical Interior (1917)
Il grande metafisico (The Grand Metaphysician), 1917, oil on canvas, 104.8 x 69.5 cm
Il grande metafisico (The Grand Metaphysician) (1917)
Au Bord de la Mer,Le Grand Automate,The Terrible Games,Mannequins on the Seashore andThe Painter (1925)
La Commedia e la Tragedia (Commedia Romana),The Painter's Family andCupboards in a Valley (1926)
L'Esprit de Domination,The Eventuality of Destiny (Monumental Figures),Mobili nella valle andThe Archaeologists (1927)
Temple et Forêt dans la Chambre (1928)
Gladiatori (began in 1927),The Archaeologists IV (from the series Metamorphosis),The return of the Prodigal son I (from the series Metamorphosis) andBagnante (Ritratto di Raissa) (1929)
The Return of Ulysses,Interno Metafisico con Nudo Anatomico andMysterious Baths – Flight Toward the Sea (1968)
Il rimorso di Oreste,La Biga Invincibile andSolitudine della Gente di Circo (1969)
Orfeo Trovatore Stanco,Intero Metafisico andMuse with Broken Column (1970)
Metaphysical Interior with Setting Sun (1971)
Sole sul cavalletto (1973)
Mobili e rocce in una stanza,La Mattina ai Bagni misteriosi,Piazza d'Italia con Statua Equestre,La mattina ai bagni misteriosi andEttore e Andromaca (1973)
Pianto d'amore – Ettore e Andromaca andThe Sailors' Barracks (1974)
^Anissia Becerra."De Chirico"(PDF).marsilioeditori.it (in Italian). Retrieved7 January 2022.
^abHassall, Douglas (2020)."The art of Giorgio de Chirico: The modernist who returned to craftsmanship".Quadrant.64 (5):100–103.The standard sources record that de Chirico was born in 1888 at Volos in Greece, his mother being a Genoese Greek of Smyrna origins and his father a Sicilian barone of Greek ancestry. The Greek Kyriko family had moved to Palermo from Rhodes in 1523, as part of a migration of some 4000 Greek Catholic families into Sicily and southern Italy.
^Aa.Vv. (2014).Giorgio De Chirico. L'uomo, l'artista, il polemico: Guida alle interviste 1938–1978 (in Italian). Roma: Gangemi. p. 64.ISBN978-8849224320.
^Aa.Vv. (2014).Giorgio De Chirico. L'uomo, l'artista, il polemico: Guida alle interviste 1938–1978 (in Italian). Roma: Gangemi. p. 49.ISBN978-8849224320.
^abGale, Matthew (2003, January 01). "De Chirico, Giorgio". Grove Art Online. Ed.
^Holzhey, Magdalena.Giorgio de Chirico. Cologne: Taschen, 2005, p. 10.ISBN3-8228-4152-8
^abcdesee the entry on de Chirico in "Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts 1880–1940", by Giulio Carlo Argan, 1990, p. 201,ISBN978-3-549-05112-2
^Metken, G. (1981).Realismus: zwischen Revolution und Reaktion, 1919–1939 : [Ausstellung im Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 17. Dezember 1980-20. April 1981 : Ausstellung in der Staatlichen Kunsthalle, Berlin, 16. Mai-28. Juni 1981. München: Prestel-Verlag. pp. 83–84.ISBN3-7913-0540-9.
^Schwartz, Sanford.Artists and Writers. New York: Yarrow Press, 1990, pp. 28–29.ISBN1-878274-01-5
^Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer.On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism, 1910–1930. London: Tate Gallery, 1990, p. 81.ISBN1-854-37043-X
^Hughes, Robert, essay fromNothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists, 1982, seen atartchive.comArchived 2007-02-14 at theWayback Machine, retrieved June 19, 2013.
^Wells, Walter,Silent Theater: the Art of Edward Hopper, London/New York: Phaidon, 2007
^Christina Britzolakis, "Conversation amongst the Ruins: Plath and de Chirico", in Connors & Bayley, eds., 'Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual' (Oxford University Press 2007)
de Chirico, gli anni Venti, curated by Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, exhibition catalogue, Galleria dello Scudo, Verona, 1986-1987; Mazzotta, Milan, 1986
Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Maurizio (1999),L'opera completa di de Chirico 1908–1924, Rizzoli, Milano, 1984
Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Maurizio (1991),Giorgio de Chirico carte, Extra Moenia Arte Moderna, Todi
Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Maurizio, & Cavallo, Luigi (1985),De Chirico. Disegni inediti (1929), Edizioni grafiche Tega, Milano
Gimferrer, Pere (1988),De Chirico, 1888–1978, opere scelte, Rizzoli, Milano
de Chirico, gli anni Trenta, curated by Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, exhibition catalogue, Galleria dello Scudo and Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, 1998-1999; Mazzotta, Milan, 1998
Merjian, Ara H. (2014)Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Modernism, Paris, New Haven (Yale University Press), 2014
Mori, Gioia (2007),De Chirico metafisico, Giunti, Firenze
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