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Giorgio
de Chirico/Works
and biography
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The Red
Tower
1913 |
The Nostalgia
of the Poet
1914 |
The Gentle
Afternoon
1916 |
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Giorgio de Chirico was born to Italian parents in Vólos,
Greece, on July 10, 1888. In 1900 he began to study
at the Athens Polytechnic Institute and attended evening
classes in drawing from the nude. About 1906 he moved
to Munich, where he attended the Akademie der Bildenden
Künste. At this time he became interested in the
art of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger and the writings
of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. De Chirico
moved to Milan in 1909, to Florence in 1910, and to
Paris in 1911. In Paris he was included in the Salon
d’Automne in 1912 and 1913 and in the Salon des
Indépendants in 1913 and 1914. As a frequent
visitor to Guillaume Apollinaire’s weekly gatherings,
he met Constantin Brancusi, André Derain, Max
Jacob, and others. Because of the war, in 1915 de Chirico
returned to Italy, where he met Filippo de Pisis in
1916 and Carlo Carrà in 1917; they formed the
group that was later called the Scuola Metafisica.
The artist moved to Rome in 1918, and was given his
first solo exhibition at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia
in that city in the winter of 1918–19. In this
period he was one of the leaders of the Gruppo Valori
Plastici, with whom he showed at the Nationalgalerie
in Berlin. From 1920 to 1924 he divided his time between
Rome and Florence. A solo exhibition of de Chirico’s
work was held at the Galleria Arte in Milan in 1921,
and he participated in the Venice Biennale for the first
time in 1924. In 1925 the artist returned to Paris,
where he exhibited that year at Léonce Rosenberg’s
Galerie l’Effort Moderne. In Paris his work was
shown at the Galerie Paul Guillaume in 1926 and 1927
and at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in 1927. In 1928 he
was given solo shows at the Arthur Tooth Gallery in
London and the Valentine Gallery in New York. In 1929
de Chirico designed scenery and costumes for Sergei
Diaghilev’s production of the ballet Le Bal, and
his book Hebdomeros was published. The artist designed
for the ballet and opera in subsequent years, and continued
to exhibit in Europe, the United States, Canada, and
Japan. In 1945 the first part of his book Memorie della
mia vita appeared. De Chirico died on November 20, 1978,
in Rome, his residence for over thirty years.
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