Giorgio de Chirico. 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 most well-known works often feature Roman arcades, long shadows, mannequins, trains, and illogical perspective.
His imagery reflects his affinity for the philosophy of Nietzsche and for the mythology of his birthplace. After 1919, he became a critic of modern art, studied traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work.
De Chirico was born in Volos, Greece, as the eldest son of Gemma Cervetto and Evaristo de Chirico. His mother was Genoese-Greek and his father a Sicilian barone from a family of remote Greek origin.
De Chirico's family was in Greece at the time of his birth because his father, engineer, was in charge of the construction of a railroad. Beginning in 1900, de Chirico studied drawing and painting at Athens Polytechnic, mainly under the guidance of the Greek painters Georgios Roilos and Georgios Jakobides. After Evaristo de Chirico's death in 1905, the family relocated in 1906 to Germany, after first visiting Florence. De Chirico entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he studied under Gabriel von Hackl and Carl von Marr and read the writings of the philosop