KIRIKOU Giorgio de (Chirico Giorgio de)

(1888-1978)
Giorgio de Chirico was born in the Greek town of Volos July 10, 1888. He studied at the Graduate School of Arts in Athens and at the Art Academy in Munich. Passion for the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the allegorical painting of Arnold Bocklin facilitated the emergence of De Chirico's of no interest to the principles of academic realism, but to interpret the mysterious symbols, dreams and hallucinations. In 1908-1911 he lived in Italy, mainly in Florence, since 1911 - in Paris, and with the beginning of World War I he returned to Italy. Between 1908 and 1917 De Chirico created his most important works - a series of deserted city squares and still life consisting of completely unrelated to each other items. Even the titles of these works, such as the joy and mystery of strange hours (1913) and the melancholy and mystery of the street (1914), indicate the author's desire to fill the most ordinary situations of danger and a sense of unreality. The artist himself said in 1913: 'What I hear - does not mean anything, there is only what I see with my own eyes - and even more than that, what I see with my eyes closed'. In 1915-1919 Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carra formulated a theoretical basis for his art, giving rise to short-lived trend in the Italian metaphysical painting art. In 1920 the artist turned to the creation of a romantic variation on the classic stories.

Early work by Giorgio de Chirico had a significant influence on the Surrealist art and its representatives such as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali and others. According to its founder and ideologist of Andre Breton, only works of De Chirico was given the opportunity to express the program of surrealist painting tools. In 1945 the artist published an autobiography, Recollections of my life. Giorgio de Chirico died in Rome on November 20, 1978.