Giorgio de Chirico – Italian painter, writer, theatre designer, sculptor and printmaker. De Chirico was one of the originators of Pittura Metafisica. His paintings are characterized by a visionary, poetic use of imagery, in which themes such as nostalgia, enigma and myth are explored. He was an important source of inspiration for artists throughout Europe in the inter-war years and again for a new generation of painters in the 1980s. His abrupt stylistic changes, however, have obscured the continuity of his approach, which was rooted in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and this has often led to controversy.
When asked about writers who had influenced him, John Ashbery cited de Chirico and encouraged his audience to read de Chirico’s work including the de Chirco novel written in French that Ashbery himself translated. The poet took the title of his 1970 collection The Double Dream of Spring from a de Chirico painting. "De Chirico’s novels would be among those that Andre Breton would want if stranded on a desert island," Ashbery noted.
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