Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio Chirico (1888-1978) was an Italian painter who lived and worked in Paris. He was a pioneer for the “metaphysical” paintings in surrealism’s earliest stages. His artistic world blends Italian early Renaissance, 19th-century Romanticism, and Cubist Constructivism. In the 1910s he created his suggestive, dreamlike landscapes: vast, moonlit, and desolate piazzas populated with statues or mechanical mannequins. In the later part of his career, Chirico moved onto formal realism, one which shows a great detachment from his previous art styles and from modern art. Chirico has even done theatre decorations and book illustrations.