Giorgio de Chirico and the Surrealists

What is especially needed is great sensitivity: to look upon everything in the world as enigma. To live in the world as an immense museum of strange things. Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico is best known for his metaphysical paintings - strange piazzas with statues that project long shadows, with trains that seem to go somewhere and at the same time nowhere. Other of his metaphysical works feature an assemblage of disconnected objects - sculpted heads, gloves, measuring tools and mannequins. It is in this vein, that the surrealists admired and bought his canvases. They thought of him as the precursor of Surrealism.

André Breton, a writer and poet who led the Surrealist movement, had been corresponding with de Chirico since 1921 but it was in Paris at the end of 1924 that the two actually met. This great professional collaboration and friendship came to an abrupt end in 1926. Breton had declared publicly that de Chirico as an artist had died in 1918. The surrealists viewed de Chirico’s turn toward classical paintings, which brought to mind the Renaissance and the Baroque period, as inferior to the groundbreaking metaphysical compositions of the preceding years.

Giorgio de Chirico Portrait of Matilde Castelfranco 1921

Giorgio de Chirico Portrait of Signora 1921

Giorgio de Chirico Head of San Giovanni 1921

Giorgio de Chirico Self Portrait with Mother 1922

Giorgio de Chirico Self Portrait with Head of Medusa 1923

Giorgio de Chirico Ulisse (Self Portrait) 1924

Giorgio de Chirico Self Portrait 1925

Although it was true that de Chirico produced works which were obviously influenced by the great masters, he continued through his career to revisit metaphysical subjects where the past and the present meet. His later oeuvre “mourns the modern world” and sees it as “a ruin found by archeologists.”

Giorgio de Chirico The Family of the Painter 1926

Giorgio de Chirico My room in Olympius1927

Giorgio de Chirico Thebes 1928

Giorgio de Chirico Makers of Trophies1926 - 28

Giorgio de Chirico Combat of Gladiators1927

Giorgio de Chirico Ancient Horses 1927

An interesting footnote. Despite the fact that the surrealists were critical of de Chirico’s later artistic production, it did not stop them from acquiring more paintings executed both in the metaphysical and neoclassical styles. André Breton commissioned duplicates of earlier works. Paul and Gala Éluard, other members of the Surrealist movement, purchased paintings done in a traditional style including Ulisse of 1924.

The works of Giorgio de Chirico shown in this post were seen in Torino, November 2024 at Museo di Arti Decorative Accorsi-Ometto. The show entitled Giorgio de Chirico: 1924 spans the career of de Chirico from 1921 to 1928. 1924 was the year Surrealism was founded.