Volo, 1888 – Rome, 1978

Giorgio de Chirico was born in 1888 in Volo (Greece) to Italian parents. In 1906, after brief stops in Milan and Venice, he moved to Munich, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts and came into contact with the culture of the time. He became interested in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and was impressed by the Symbolist and decadent painting of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger.

Back in Italy, he began to paint subjects characterised by mystery and melancholy, a prelude to the ‘Piazze d’Italia’ that he would later paint in Paris, Milan, Florence and Rome. In 1911, he moved to Paris, where he befriended the poets Valery and Apollinaire and began the ‘Mannequins’ cycle. He returned to Italy in 1915 and began to paint his first ‘Metaphysical Interiors’. The following year he met the painter Carlo Carrà at the military hospital in Ferrara and together they laid the foundations of metaphysical painting.

From 1918 to 1922 he actively participated in the magazine Valori Plastici and in 1919 his first personal exhibition took place at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in Rome. In 1924, he returned to Paris where he frequented the Surrealist group, but did not integrate himself into their style. From 1925 he devoted himself to other subjects, such as seated mannequins, gladiators and horses. He returned to Italy in 1931 and exhibited in numerous Italian venues before embarking for New York in 1936. After the war, he settled definitively in Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In the post-war production known as ‘neo-metaphysical period’, de Chirico returned to the themes he had tackled in previous decades and which were dearest to him, such as the ‘Piazza d’Italia’ and ‘Manichini’; this period of rediscovery and research continued until 1978, the year of his death.