On exhibit

from November 8, 2024, to March 2, 2025

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO: 1924

Curated by Victoria Noel-Johnson

One hundred years after the birth of Surrealism (1924-2024), the Accorsi-Ometto Foundation celebrates Giorgio de Chirico, considered the precursor of the French movement by its founder, André Breton.

Focusing on a specific time period from 1921 to 1928, the exhibition, curated by Victoria Noel-Johnson, is the first to highlight the events surrounding 1924, a crucial year for the foundation of Surrealism, in which the Italian painter played a fundamental role. The aim is to underscore de Chirico’s importance in the birth and development of Surrealism, as well as to analyze his complicated relationship with André Breton, the French poet Paul Éluard, and Éluard’s wife, Gala.

The exhibition features over 70 works, including around fifty paintings and drawings by Giorgio de Chirico, alongside twenty portraits of surrealist artists, poets, and writers, photographed by Man Ray and Lee Miller, all from private collections or important museums and institutions.

Thanks to the prestigious loan from the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris, the correspondence between de Chirico and Breton (1921-1925) will also be displayed for the first time, including the little-known 1924 letter in which de Chirico proposed to create the first replica of his 1918 painting The Disquieting Muses (Le Muse inqiuetanti) for Breton.