Giorgio de Chirico

Text in English. 128 pp. 156 illustrations, 135 in color. Former owner's name in the title page. Minor edge wear and rubbing to dust jacket. The Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) is known for a highly symbolic visionary art that earned the name Metaphysical painting. The first compact survey of an artist whose reputation has taken on new luster in a Postmodern age, this book presents the many works that are considered forerunners of twentieth-century movements such as Dada and Surrealism. During his early and most important phase-which lasted until about 1920-de Chirico saw his artistic role as that of an oracle, whose aim was to extract the central, transcendent mystery of a theme. To this end he fused fantastic and dream imagery with objects from everyday experiences or from classical artistic traditions into a personal blend of reality and unreality Filled with rigid architectural forms in exaggerated perspective, enigmatic silhouettes, plaster sculptures, and severed hands and feet, the artist's canvases convey a disturbing strangeness. Pere Gimferrer, a well-known Catalan poet and author, has written books on artists Antoni Tapies, Max Ernst, Joan Miro and Rene Magritte, among others. …