Giorgio De Chirico

Giorgio De Chirico was an Italian artist, best known for his metaphysical paintings. Born to an Italian family in Greece, he studied painting in Athens and Florence. In 1906, he moved to Munich, where he discovered the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the painting of Klinger and Böcklin. In 1910, De Chirico moved to Paris and became close with Picasso and Apollinaire, but returned to Italy after the start of World War I. In 1917, he met artist Carlo Carrà in a military hospital and the two co-founded the metaphysical painting movement. De Chirico’s works from this period have had a major influence on surrealist artists, including Salvador Dalí and René Magritte