The first overview in decades of the eerie allegories of de Chirico, the forefather of surrealism and genius of uncanny connections

An innovative analysis of the artistic poetics of the master of metaphysical painting.

Through a selection of important works made during this master’s career, this volume aims to conduct a critical revision of the artist’s complex practice for the centenary of his so-called volte-face in 1919, the year he was criticised for leaving metaphysical painting (1910-1918) in favour of styles and techniques inspired by Classicism and the grand masters.

Edited by the most important experts of De Chirico, The Face of Metaphysics promotes an innovative interpretation of the artist’s oeuvre (both metaphysical, where the traditional confines of linear time and space are replaced by the doctrine of cyclical coexistence); an arrangement according to themes and not chronology underlines the idea that, despite the many changes in style, technique and subject, composition and colour tone, all of De Chirico’s works may offer tangible visions of the intangible philosophical concept of Metaphysics, advanced by Nietzsche in the late 1800s: constant metaphysics.

Divided into six sections (The Eternal Return; Metaphysical Exteriors; Metaphysical Protagonists; Metaphysical Interiors; Metaphysical nature; Metaphysics Encounters Tradition), this volume gathers around 90 works from some of the most prestigious private museums and collections in Italy and from the Fondazione de Chirico and also offers a rich core of archive documents including letters, period photos and exhibition catalogues.

About the Author:

Victoria Noel-Johnson is an art curator and historian specialised in early 20th-century Italian art. Recognised as one of the greatest experts of Giorgio de Chirico’s painting, from 2008 to 2017 she was the scientific curator at the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico, where she managed the art collection and international exhibition programme for the Foundation.

This is the most comprehensive volume probing the life and work of the modern art icon Giorgio de Chirico.

Giorgio de Chirico was one of the most controversial and consequential artists of the twentieth century — a key member of the Paris avant-garde, he was a major influence on other artists, especially the nascent surrealists. His repertoire of motifs — empty arcades, elongated shadows, mannequins, trains — created images of forlorn emptiness that became iconic.

Artists inspired by de Chirico’s early work include Yves Tanguy, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, and René Magritte. His influence also extended beyond painting and included writers and poets Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton, John Ashbery, and Sylvia Plath, filmmakers Jacques Prévert and Michelangelo Antonioni, and even David Bowie, who admired de Chirico’s genderless tailors’ dummies that inspired his music videos.

After the Great War, he turned toward neoclassicism and bitterly fell out with the surrealists and the mainstream modernist movement — in the process, becoming an outspoken outsider of the art world.

This in-depth examination of the artist’s life and work by the world’s foremost de Chirico authority is based on new archival research and offers a fresh view of de Chirico’s relationship with surrealism, fascism, forgery, and the European avant-gardes.

About the Author:

Fabio Benzi is considered the world’s foremost expert on Giorgio de Chirico. He is a professor at the University of Chieti-Pescara and a board member of Fondazione de Chirico, and he has curated exhibitions in Rome, Venice, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Vienna, New York, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, and London.

Pittura Metafisica. The brooding spaces of Giorgio de Chirico

With his Pittura Metafisica, Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico was a highly influential figure in the 20th-century avant-garde. Allied to the Surrealist movement, he developed a compelling style composed of sharp perspectives, striking shadows, ominous voids, and lonely figures, at once dreamlike, anxious, and brooding.

With his Pittura Metafisica, Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) was a major influence in Europe’s interwar avant-garde, hailed by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Paul Éluard.

The artist’s Pittura Metafisica set statues or mannequin-like figures in exaggerated one-point perspective spaces including city squares, receding arcades, distant walls, or claustrophobic interiors. Sharp perspectives, striking shadows, geometrical planes, and voids of space crafted a compositional drama and lurking mood of anxiety and loneliness.

The paintings set out to disquiet, to make the viewer reassess the nature of reality and search beneath its appearances for elusive memories and unexpected insights. While the Surrealists around Breton turned to Freud’s theories of the unconscious, de Chirico was fascinated by Nietzsche.

This dependable artist introduction explores all the ominous shadows and brooding corners of de Chirico’s Pittura Metafisica as well as his later development into a more classical style, a shift widely criticized by the Surrealists who had so admired his early paintings.

The author:

Magdalena Holzhey studied art history, Italian, and musicology in Berlin and Pisa. She held various academic and curatorial positions in galleries and museums, including the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, before becoming Curator of Collections of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. She has published widely on classical modernism and contemporary art.

About the series:

Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. 

Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:
- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico (1888-1978) was hugely influential in the early years of the Surrealist movement. His paintings during the teens in Paris, where he moved in 1911, caused such a stir that such important figures as Picasso and Paul Eluard immediately praised them. This phase of his work, which he later termed pittura metafisica (metaphysical painting) was marked by dramatic compositions involving sharp perspective, striking shadows, geometrical planes, voids of space, and a general feeling of anxiety and loneliness; the sense of absurdity evoked by the mannequin-like figures in almost nightmarish landscapes seemed to suggest a Freudian expression of the unconscious. After 1930, De Chirico turned to a more classical style of painting and continued in the same vein for the rest of his career; his later work was widely criticized, especially by the Surrealists who had so admired his early paintings.

About the Series:

Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography