Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His best-known works often feature Roman arcades, long shadows, mannequins, trains, and illogical perspective. His imagery reflects his affinity for the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and of Friedrich Nietzsche, and for the mythology of his birthplace.
Photograph of Chirico by Carl Van Vechten in 1936
The Song of Love, 1914, oil on canvas, 73 × 59.1 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Le mauvais génie d'un roi (The Evil Genius of a King), 1914–15, oil on canvas, 61 × 50.2 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Seer, 1914–15, oil on canvas, 89.6 × 70.1 cm, Museum of Modern Art
Metaphysical painting or metaphysical art was a style of painting developed by the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began in 1910 with de Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality, "painting that which cannot be seen". De Chirico, his younger brother Alberto Savinio, and Carrà formally established the school and its principles in 1917.
The Disquieting Muses by Giorgio de Chirico, 1947
The Song of Love by Giorgio de Chirico, 1914
Carlo Carrà, 1918, L'Ovale delle Apparizioni (The Oval of Apparition), oil on canvas, 92 x 60 cm, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome
Arnaldo dell'Ira, Piazza d'Italia, 1934
