THE SEEKER by Giorgio de Chirico surrealistic art print

Giorgio de Chirico (July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978) was an influential pre-Surrealist Greek-Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement. His name (pronounced "JOHR-joh day kee-REE-koh", is traditionally written De Chirico (capitalized De) when alone.

After studying art in Athens and Florence, De Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he read the writings of the philosophers Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer, and studied the works of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger.

He returned to Italy in the summer of 1909 and spent six months in Milan. At the beginning of 1910, he moved to Florence where he painted the first of his 'Metaphysical Town Square' series: The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon after the revelation he felt in Piazza Santa Croce. He also painted The Enigma of the Oracle while in Florence. In July 1911 he spent a few days in Turin on his way to Paris. De Chirico was profoundly moved by what he called the 'metaphysical aspect' of Turin: the architecture of its archways and piazzas. It was the city of Nietzsche. De Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea. Through his brother he met Pierre Laprade a member of the jury at the Salon d'Automne, where he exhibited three of his works Enigma of the Oracle, Enigma of an Afternoon and Self-Portrait. During 1913 he exhibited his work at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne, his work was noticed by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, he also sold his first painting, The Red Tower. In 1914 through Guillaume Apollinaire, he met the art dealer Paul Guillaume, with whom he signed a contract for his artistic output.

De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were still cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like hybrid figures. Later in his life De Chirico abandoned the metaphysical style and started painting more realistically. His later paintings never received the same critical praise as did those from his metaphysical period. He thought his later classical style was better, more mature, and resented that they were not successful. He produced backdated "self-forgeries" both to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of revenge -- retribution for the critical preference for his early work. He also denounced authentic paintings from his early period, and even his own later self-forgeries, as (anonymous) forgeries.