Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian artist actve in the early to mid 20th century who pioneeded what he called metaphysical art, in which he employed enigmatic arrangements of objects and eerie scenes of city squares that used deliberate distortions of linear perspective to create feelings of disorientation.

This work was very influential on the Surrealists, who would likewise incorporate disorienting imagery in their dream-fuled excursions into the mysterious and bizarre.

The Surrealists unofficially adopted him as a kind of contemporary proto-Surrealist, and extolled him work as a kindred spirit, until de Chirico took an abrupt turn in the middle of his career, abandoning the contra-logical imaginings of the metaphysical for a much more straightforward and traditional approach to painting. At that point, de Chirico and the Surrealists apparently agreed to mutually despise one another.