Chirico. Metaphysical painting

What is it about?

The Giorgio de Chirico. Metaphysical Painting exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie is an opportunity to discover, or rediscover, this Italian painter’s unique career which took him from Munich to Ferrara, Paris to Turin. Chirico developed an instantly-recognisable pictorial language known as metaphysical painting. The three main chronological sections retrace his stylistic evolution; from his early production in Munich, still influenced by classicism and Romanticism, to the paintings he made later in Ferrara. Working alongside Carlo Carrà, Chirico reinvented his motifs, in a country completely turned upside down by the First World War. The exhibition equally looks back at the time Chirico spent in Paris. It was here, in what was then the “capital of the arts” that the artist crossed paths with the poet Apollinaire and the art dealer Paul Guillaume. It was also in the Parisian galleries that artists from the future Surrealist group, led by André Breton, discovered and admired his painting, making Chirico one of the key sources of inspiration for their new avant-garde movement.