Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico was born on July 10, 1888, "during a torrid day," at Volo, capital of the coastal province of Thessaly in Greece . From this seaport, according to legend, the Argonauts had sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece. De Chirico's childhood was partly spent there, partly in Athens . He was the second of three children. His sister died as a very young girl; his brother Andrea, known professionally until his recent death as Alberto Savinio, was three years his junior. His parents were Italian, his father having come from Palermo , his mother from Genoa.

Around 1897, after several years in Athens , the Giorgio de Chirico family moved back to Volo. There Giorgio was provided with an art teacher. His name was Mavrudis. He was a Greek from Trieste and Giorgio de Chirico described him in his autobiography as immensely gifted and in matters of theoretic discussion comparable to Ruskin. Mavrudis gave Giorgio de Chirico drawing lessons three times a week until in 1899 the family again moved to Athens . In that city Mavrudis was replaced as instructor by an Italian artist, Carlo Barbieri, whom Giorgio de Chirico mentions as being far less talented than his predecessor and further accuses of having had extreme halitosis.

In Athens Giorgio de Chirico was tutored in languages, took lessons on the 'cello, saw his first exhibition of paintings in which he especially admired some scenes of the recently concluded Greek-Turkish war by one Roilos. He also took additional lessons in drawing from a Swiss named Gilleron and studied other subjects at the Liceo Leonino, a Catholic seminary. In brief his education was thorough and strict, a fact which in his older age he approves to such a degree that, with characteristic violence, he dismisses more progressive educational methods as "related to a certain mentality common to nudists and vegetarians."

Around 1900 Giorgio de Chirico was enrolled by his parents in the drawing classes at the Polytechnic Institute in Athens . The instruction given him there was traditional, arduous-and slow. Four years of copying prints, drawings and finally casts of sculpture were required before the student progressed to the living model and, at last, to the use of color. But Giorgio de Chirico had apparently already begun to experiment with oil painting at home. He was then twelve years old. His first painting was a still life of lemons and he was advised in technique by Bolonakis, a member of the Polytechnic staff. He eventually entered the painting classes at the Polytechnic, where his instructor was a man named Jacobidis, of whom he still speaks respectfully. Late in 1905 or early in 1906 Giorgio de Chirico graduated from the Polytechnic's art school, extensively trained in technical procedures.

Gemma Giorgio de Chirico probably favored Munich as being both more accessible than Paris and as the one city in Europe where she felt both sons could be trained adequately, Andrea in music, Giorgio in painting. At any rate the family set off for Germany in 1906, stopping on the way at Venice , where Giorgio de Chirico was not deeply impressed by the art of Titian, Tintoretto or Veronese. The family also stopped briefly at Milan , where Giorgio was stirred by the pictures of Segantini and Previati-almost certainly the most advanced works he had seen up to that date.