An Italian painter who was also active in the worlds of literature, theatre, design and sculpture. Between 1903 and 1905, he studied drawing at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens. In 1906 he moved to Munich and, in 1910, to Florence. It was in this year he produced his first important work, Enigma of an Autumm Afternoon. In 1911 he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with the Cubists Apollinaire, Picasso, Derain, Brancusi and others. He painted the series Italian Squares and, in 1913, he sold his first painting in the Salon d' Automne. In May 1918, he exhibited in Italy with Carra and, nine months later, held his first one-man show at the Bragaglia Gallery in Rome. In 1924, he returned to Paris, where the Surrealist group had become familiar with his work from 1914 to 1917, interpreting it in the light of their interest in the subconscious derived from Freudian analysis. After successive trips between France and the United States in the 50s, De Chirico spoke against the Venice Biennale's and Modernism in general. Giorgio De Chirico always wanted his work to approach a unified whole and he finally brought the public to accept an interpretation of his art that corrected the unbalanced outbursts of Surrealism. In his "metaphysical painting", objects, characters and scenes are connected in an unusual way, creating a mysteriously calm pictorial space, transmitting an alienating and enigmatic quietude to his works.