Chirico, Giorgio de (1888-1978)

Greek-born Italian painter. He founded the school of metaphysical painting, which in its enigmatic imagery and haunted, dreamlike settings presaged surrealism, as in Nostalgia of the Infinite (1911; Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Born in Volós, Chirico studied in Athens and Munich. Between 1911 and 1915 he worked in Paris, where he produced a remarkable series of paintings in which an uneasy sense of mystery is created by empty squares, deeply shadowed colonnades and toylike trains in the far distance. Melancholy and Mystery of a Street (Museum of Modern Art, New York) is an example of his style. In 1917 he met Carlo Carrà and they founded the school of metaphysical painting. The school was short-lived; Chirico's style gradually changed and by the 1930s, having repudiated the modern movement in art, he was reworking the styles of the old masters.