De Chirico: The Metaphysical Period, 1888-1919

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1997. First North American Edition. Hardcover. VG/VGsmall tear at top of dustjacket at spine. Royal blue cloth, blue & illus. dust jacket, 444 pp., 450 BW illus., 150 color illus. "The most authoritative source on the formative years and period of greatest achievement in the career of Giorgio de Chirico [1888-1978], one of the masters of twentieth-century art. Beginning around 1909, Giorgio de Chirico projected in his paintings an irrational, dreamlike world of empty classical cityscapes populated by statues, shadows, and familiar objects isolated or mysteriously juxtaposed. This Metaphysical Painting, as he called it, was seized on by the Surrealists in the 1920s and has continued to haunt our imagination. [This book] reveals the many biographical elements of de Chirico's mysterious work, devoting particular attention to his most critically acclaimed period, 1909-19." (dj). Contents as follows: The Formulation of a Mode of Thought July 1888-July 1911. Volos and Athens, 1888-1906. Earthly Eternity. Munich, 1906-1909. The Crises of Romanticism. Milan, 1909. Revelation and Enigma. Florence, 1910-1911. Architecture and A Theory of Dreams -- The Birth of an Opus July 1911-May 1915. Paris, 1911-1912. The Symbolic Language of the Modern Myth. Paris, 1913. From the Encounter with Apollinaire to the "Solitude of Signs" Paris, 1914. An Art for the Initiated. Paris, Autumn 1914-May 1915. Mannequins and Interiors. A Mystical Art -- The Italian Illusion June 1915-February 1919. Ferrara, 1915-1916. The Birth of a Cultural Strategy. Ferrara, 1917. A Metaphysical Movement? Ferrara and Rome, 1918-1919. A Losing Battle -- App. 1. A Work from 1909 Reelaborated in a Subsequent Period -- App. 2. Metaphysical Paintings after 1919 -- App. 3. Rejected Works -- App. 4. Paintings that Remained in the Paris Studio -- Catalogue of the Drawings. Autumn 1909-February 1919 -- Exhibitions from 1912 to 1940 where Works from the Metaphysical Period were Shown.