De Chirico

One of a series of monographs introducing the work of 20th-century artists, this text is devoted to the life and career of Giorgio de Chirico, one of the most elusive figures of modern art. Recognized as a forerunner of several important 20th-century movements, he suddenly turned his back on his years of modernist experimentation and returned to classicism. Born in Greece of Italian parents, de Chirico received a traditional art training, but soon fell under the influence of the German Romantic painters, and of the philosophical writings of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, as well as by the emerging science of psychoanalysis. In 1911 he moved to Paris, where his work inspired the future Dadaists and Surrealists, who responded to his haunted vision and enigmatic juxtapositions. Later his work developed a "metaphysical" style - a disturbing, dreamlike merging of reality and unreality. In 1920 de Chirico abandoned his metaphysical work and returned to a conservative, classical style. Illustrated with more than 60 of his paintings, this book re-examines the work of this visionary artist.