Biography

Alberto Savinio was an Italian artist and writer known primarily as the younger brother of the painter Giorgio de Chirico. In both his literature and paintings, Savinio dealt with philosophical and Surrealist themes. Born Andrea de Chirico on August 25, 1891 in Athens, Greece to Italian parents, his father worked as a railway engineer in Greece. Moving with his family between Italy and Germany, Savinio was already a sought-after musician in Munich when he moved to Paris at the age of 20. While in France, he fell into a milieu of poets and artists that included Guillaume Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. In 1914, with his brother already gaining fame for his paintings, to distinguish himself the artist changed his pen name to Alberto Savinio. Joining his brother to enlist in the Italian army during World War I, the two brothers along with Giovanni Papini founded the Metaphysical School. Establishing himself with both operas and fiction writing, in 1926, Savinio returned to Paris where he began to paint in earnest, producing works influenced by his brother but idiosyncratically his own, such as The Enchanted Island (1928). The artist died on May 5, 1952 in Rome, Italy. In 2017, he was the subject of a rare exhibition at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York. Today, Savinio’s works are held in the collections of National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, and the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Trento.