|
Major Italian painter, who
founded the metaphysical school. He was born in Volos, Greece, the
son of an Italian engineer. He studied art in Athens and in Munich,
where he was strongly influenced by the allegorical works of the
19th-century Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin. In Turin and Florence
and in Paris, where he settled in 1911, he painted deserted
cityscapes, such as Enigma of an Autumn Night (1910) and Mystery
and |
Melancholy of a Street (1914).
These early metaphysical works, through sharp contrasts of light
and shadow and exaggerated perspective, evoke a haunting, dream
world. In 1915 de Chirico met the futurist painter Carlo Carrà. |
Together
they founded the magazine Pittura Metafisica in 1920. From 1915 to
1925 de Chirico painted bizarre, faceless and wildly unrelated
objects, a technique adopted by the surrealists. From 1924 to 1930
de Chirico gave enormous impetus to the surrealist movement and
influenced such surrealists as Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dalí. By
the mid-1930s he had turned to an outworn academic style and chose
to become a fashionable portraitist. |
