Giorgio De Chirico

Painter and printmaker (1888 - 1978)

Giorgio De Chirico (Volos, 1888 – Rome, 1978) spent his childhood in Greece with his Italian family and his brother Andrea, who would later become known by the pseudonym Alberto Savinio for his career as a musician, writer, and painter. During their youth, while Alberto devoted himself to studying the piano, Giorgio enrolled at the Athens Polytechnic and began to dedicate himself to the study and practice of painting. In 1906 he moved to Munich and in 1909 to Paris, where he met the leading artists of the time and studied their works.  

From his earliest works, his paintings displayed a distinctly personal style characterized by dreamlike visions juxtaposed with classically linear architectural elements. Mannequins soon began to appear among his favorite subjects, depicted with great technical skill and repeatedly explored in all their plastic and interpretive possibilities.  

At the outbreak of World War I, the de Chirico brothers enlisted as volunteers and were sent to Ferrara, where Giorgio met the Futurist painter Carlo Carrà: together they refined the theoretical definition of metaphysical painting—that is, an art capable of capturing reality from a visionary and enigmatic perspective. Many of his paintings, which belong to the metaphysical genre, are characterized by the presence of minimalist architecture set in unrealistic perspectives, enveloped in an aura of mystery and solitude underscored by the absence of human figures.  

Giorgio De Chirico devoted himself masterfully to printmaking, exploring in his graphic work the themes and subjects most familiar to him and achieving results of the highest caliber. 

His work paved a highly influential path for much of 20th-century Italian and European painting. He died in Rome on November 20, 1978. 

ph.© Carl Van Vechten