To be an artist,

 “To be an artist, you have to nurture the things that most people discard.”  Richard Avedon, Darkness and Light 

The LLR: humanity

The LLR: humanity: humanity i love you because you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it’s there and sitting ...

Art for the Pop of It: Photorealism

Art for the Pop of It: Photorealism: Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic mediums, in which an artist studies a photograph and ...

Art for the Pop of It: Photorealism

Art for the Pop of It: Photorealism: by Dawn Levesque Photorealism was a major American art movement of the 1970s. It consisted of painters who used photography as the...

Art for the Pop of It: Mimmo Rotella Pioneer of European Pop Art: Survey ...

Art for the Pop of It: Mimmo Rotella Pioneer of European Pop Art: Survey ...: Ilka Scobie Artlyst A pioneer of European Pop art, Mimmo Rotella’s 150 work survey focuses on his early pieces from 1953 – 19...

Grounded: the great art treasures that no longer go out on the road


Vermeer's best-known portrait has joined a list of masterpieces deemed too fragile or too precious to be loaned
After a triumphant tour of Japan, then the United States and ending in Italy, the Girl with a Pearl Earring has returned home to the Mauritshuis royal picture gallery in The Hague. For ever. The museum, which reopened last month after two years' renovation work, will no longer allow Vermeer's masterpiece out. Officially the Mona Lisa of the North has been gated in order to please visitors to the Mauritshuis who only want to see that painting. Its fame has steadily increased since Tracy Chevalier published her novel in 1999 followed in 2004 by the film by Peter Webber starring Scarlett Johansson. Anyone wanting to see the portrait will have make the trip to the Dutch city.
Girl with a Pearl Earring thus joins the select band of art treasures that never see the outside world. Botticelli's Birth of Venus never leaves the Uffizi in Florence; Las Meninas by Velázquez stays put at the Prado in Madrid; Picasso's Guernica remains just down the road at the Reina Sofia museum; and his Demoiselles d'Avignon can only be seen at MoMA in New York.
Other sedentary art works include La Joie de Vivre by Matisse, Le Facteur Roulin by Van Gogh and Les Joueurs de Cartes by Cézanne, which are unlikely ever to leave the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. It is impossible for the Isenheim altarpiece to leave the Unterlinden museum in Colmar, or for Degas' Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans to escape from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Needless to say, the Mona Lisa is under lock and key in the Louvre, Paris.
So why are all these famous pieces so stay-at-home? Predictably the principal reason is their state of health. Many of them, including the Mona Lisa, were painted on wood and are very sensitive to climatic changes, making travel a major worry. This is equally true of anything made of wax, as is the case with Degas' original Danseuse, which is dressed in a silk bodice, a tutu and slippers, with a wig of real hair. "We cannot even imagine a situation in which we might loan it," says Deborah Ziska, head of public information at the National Gallery of Art. The versions seen elsewhere – in the Musee d'Orsay or the Metropolitan, for example – are bronze casts made in 1922, five years after the artist's death.
Many 19th-century paintings are fragile. "They were the victims of artists testing new materials which aged badly," says Sébastien Allard, head of the painting department at the Louvre. For instance, when Géricault painted Le Radeau de la Méduse, he used Judea bitumen as a primer. It took so long to dry that tiny cracks have formed on the surface.
As it happens, just the size of the painting (4.9 metres by 7.2 metres) makes it impossible to remove from the museum. The canvas would have to be rolled up, a practice most curators now consider far too risky. Many paintings in the Louvre never move, due to their dimensions. "When we wanted to restore Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana (6.8 metres by 9.9 metres) or La Bataille d'Eylau by Gros (5.2m by 7.8m) we put up scaffolding and screens, and the restorers worked on the spot," Allard explains. "In the early 1990s, to move David's Sacre de Napoléon (6.8 metres by 9.8 metres) from the Mollien room to the Daru room, we had to cut notches in the door frames; otherwise it wouldn't have gone through." Loaning these king-size works to other museums is obviously unthinkable.
Weight is a problem too. The job of restoring the Winged Victory of Samothrace is a case in point. The statue alone weighs 32 tonnes, not counting the 23 blocks of marble that make up the pedestal. There is no question of transporting it to the laboratory of the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, at the other end of the Louvre. After 10 years' hesitation and preparation, it has finally been moved almost next door to undergo restoration.
But the last wishes of donors represent the most pressing constraint. When they leave their treasures to a museum many collectors impose strict conditions. The Van Gogh paintings at Musée d'Orsay donated by Paul Gachet's son can only be lent to another institution for retrospectives. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet and Les Coquelicots by Monet , which originally belonged to Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, cannot be shown anywhere else.
"The same rule applies to La Jeune Fille au Jardin, by Mary Cassatt, for which we receive many applications," says Xavier Rey, head of collections at the Musée d'Orsay. "We always say no because the painting, along with our finest pointillist Pissarros, belongs to the group of works bequeathed by Antonin Personnaz, with no scope for loans. Obviously we always comply with the conditions for a donation, if only as a matter of respect, not to mention legality. But also not to put off future donors." This is an important consideration, because as all curators know well, museum collections would not be what they are without the generosity of private collectors.
The most extreme restrictions often concern museums set up by private collectors. Convinced that their collection is a work in its own right, they confine it forever behind the walls of an institution. Witness the Wallace Collection in London (one of the finest sets of 14th- to 19th-century paintings, including Fragonard's delightful Swing). The same applies to two-thirds of the Frick Collection in New York (the fortunate owner of three of the 37 known Vermeers). Albert Barnes, a successful pharmacist from Philadelphia, forbade his foundation from lending anything or even making minor changes to the disposition of his 2,500 works, which include 150 by Renoir, 69 by Cézanne, 60 by Matisse, several dozen by Picasso, not to mention some superb pieces by Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh ... and the world's most beautiful Seurat, Les Poseuses.
The Duc d'Aumale, the fifth son of King Louis-Philippe, gave his estate at Chantilly to the Institut de France, along with his collection, which included three paintings by Raphael, three by Fra Angelico, five by Ingres and more works by Clouet than even the Louvre. They draw art enthusiasts from around the world. But this may not be good news for the Musée Condé. "The world of museums is highly competitive. It's a real handicap not to be able to loan works," says Nicole Garnier, the head of the museum. "It's quite simple, if you don't lend to others they won't lend to you." Which means it is difficult to stage exhibitions that attract the general public. Curators must work very hard to organise events that will draw local visitors, and convince them to repeat their visit, one of the key challenges for museums today.
"In scientific terms it really is a pity not to be able to take part in major international shows," Garnier adds. "That's where art history is happening now, through the confrontation of works." A well-designed exhibition does not simply bring together paintings or sculptures; it should also be an opportunity for curators to confront and examine works close-up, some of which were created centuries apart. Or to gauge the influence of one artist over another. "We [have sent] The Burial of Casagemas to the Prado for an exhibition on El Greco, who was a major inspiration for Picasso," says Sophie Krebs, head of collections at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. "The museum in Madrid has nothing to lend us in return, but it's a very useful contact."
 Some masterpieces are not quite as immovable as one would be led to believe. There is growing pressure for them to venture outside their safe havens, the number of exhibitions having steadily increased since the second world war and rising steeply since the 1980s. Not only are museums in need of funds, but they also have an image to promote. For example Daniel Percheron, the leader of the Nord-Pas de Calais regional council, is determined that the Louvre in Lens should one day exhibit the Mona Lisa.
Even the biggest attractions have to move sometimes. During the second world war the immovable Winged Victory was taken to the Château de Valencay, near Châteauroux, and the lady with the inscrutable smile was hidden under a curator's bed. Museums sometimes have to close for repair work, and rather than putting paintings in storage curators rent them out, to pay for part of the work. So the terms of Barnes's will did not prevent part of the collection going on a rewarding tour in the 1990s.
"A curator is by definition a rather schizophrenic character," Rey asserts. "It is their duty to protect their charge – which taken to its logical extreme means putting everything in the freezer – but also to show it to the largest possible audience."
"It's all a question of balancing risks and benefits," says curator David Cueco. "For example Delaunay's Equipe de Cardiff wasn't in very good shape when Suzanne Pagé, head of the Paris Musée d'Art Moderne, agreed to lend it to the MoMA for the High and Low show. But her move opened the way for some great Rothko paintings we'd never seen in France."
Lastly, curators are not immune to political pressure. In 2013, Antonio Natali, head of the Uffizi Gallery, allowed Titian's Venus of Urbino to be shown in Venice, yielding to the Italian premier, Mario Monti, in person. It was a symbolically powerful moment, the aim being to compare the old master with Manet's Olympia, the painting it had inspired, loaned by the Orsay. Even the Mona Lisa has taken part in two diplomatic missions, to New York in 1963 and Tokyo in 1974, stopping off on her way back in Moscow. Each time it was due to a request by the French president, against the curators' recommendations.
Would that be possible now? "I doubt it," says Allard. "Above all for its own protection. The context has changed too. There are far more visitors now: 9.3 million a year, compared with a few hundred thousand in those days. And over two-thirds are foreign visitors often on a once-in-a-lifetime outing to the Louvre ... to see the Mona Lisa." It would be terrible to disappoint them, just as for Girl with a Pearl Earring in The Hague.
"Museums are increasingly inclined to turn their masterpieces into icons, and in so doing into tools for communication," says arts management consultant Jean-Michel Tobelem. "Successfully so, what's more. The opposite extreme is the Pompidou Centre, which is packed with fabulous art none of which has come to symbolise the museum. Which is probably why there's rarely a big queue for the permanent collection. It's hard to strike a balance between investing excessive importance in specific pieces and the need for fame." To be on the safe side it is probably best to book ahead for the Mauritshuis.


Stop moving


Andrew Gifford - Jericho, last light study


Alfred Henry Maurer - Model with a Japanese Fan


Alfred Henry Maurer (April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932) was an American modernist painter. He exhibited his work in avant-garde circles internationally and in New York City during the early twentieth century. Highly respected today, his work met with little critical or commercial success in his lifetime, and he died, a suicide, at the age of sixty-four.

Abraham Mignon, Still life with fruits


Abraham Mignon or Minjon (21 June 1640 - 27 March 1679), was a Dutch golden age painter, specialized in flower bouquets.

Mignon was born at Frankfurt. His father, a merchant, placed him under the care of the still-life painter Jacob Marrel, when he was only seven years old. Marrel specialized in flower painting, and found him to be his best pupil. He accompanied Mignon when he moved to the Netherlands about 1660 to work under Jan Davidszoon de Heem at Utrecht. In 1675 he settled there permanently and married the daughter of the painter Cornelis Willaerts (granddaughter of Adam Willaerts). He died at Utrecht.

Mignon devoted himself almost exclusively to painting stilleben of flowers, fruit, birds and other still-life, though at times he also attempted portraiture. His flower pieces are marked by careful finish and delicate handling. His favourite scheme was to introduce red or white roses in the centre of the canvas and to set the whole group of flowers against a dark background.


Nowhere can his work be seen to better advantage than at the Dresden Gallery, which contains fifteen of his paintings, twelve of which are signed. Six of his pictures are at the Louvre, four at the Hermitage, and other examples are to be found at the museums of Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Brussels, Munich, Karlsruhe, Brunswick, Kassel, Schwerin, Copenhagen

Abel George Warshawsky - Bridge of Vernon


Joshua Reynolds - The Marlborough Family


Duke of Marlborough (local Listeni/ˈmɔːlbrə/ MAWL-brə) is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by Queen Anne in 1702 for John Churchill, 1st Earl of Marlborough (1650–1722), the noted military leader. The name of the dukedom refers to Marlborough in Wiltshire. It is the only current dukedom in the Peerages of England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom that can pass to a woman and through a woman.

Churchill had been made Lord Churchill of Eyemouth (1682) in the Scottish peerage, Baron Churchill of Sandridge (1685), and Earl of Marlborough (1689) in the Peerage of England, all conferred by King William III. Shortly after her accession to the throne in 1702, Queen Anne made Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough and granted him the subsidiary title Marquess of Blandford.

In 1678, Churchill married Sarah Jennings (1660–1744), a courtier and influential favourite of the queen. They had seven children, of whom four daughters married into some of the most important families in Great Britain;one daughter and two sons died in infancy. Because they had no surviving sons, the dukedom was allowed by a special Act of Parliament to pass to a woman and through a woman. When the 1st Duke of Marlborough, died in 1722, his title as Lord Churchill of Eyemouth in the Scottish peerage became extinct, and the Marlborough titles passed to his eldest daughter Henrietta (1681-1733), the 2nd Duchess of Marlborough. She was married to the 2nd Earl of Godolphin and had a son who predeceased her.

When Henrietta died in 1733, the Marlborough titles passed to her nephew Charles Spencer (1706–1758), the third son of her late sister Anne (1683-1716), who had married the 3rd Earl of Sunderland in 1699. After his older brother's death in 1729, Charles Spencer had already inherited the Spencer family estates and the titles of Earl of Sunderland (1643) and Baron Spencer of Wormleighton (1603), all in the Peerage of England. Upon his maternal aunt Henrietta's death in 1733, Charles Spencer succeeded to the Marlborough family estates and titles and became the 3rd Duke. When he died in 1758, his titles passed to his eldest son George (1739–1817), who was succeeded by his eldest son George, the 5th Duke (1766–1840). In 1815, Francis Spencer (the younger son of the 4th Duke) was created Baron Churchill in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. In 1902, his grandson, the 3rd Baron Churchill, was created Viscount Churchill.

In 1817, the 5th Duke obtained permission to assume and bear the surname of Churchill in addition to his surname of Spencer, to perpetuate the name of his illustrious great-great-grandfather. At the same time he received Royal Licence to quarter the coat of arms of Churchill with his paternal arms of Spencer. The modern Dukes thus originally bore the surname "Spencer": the double-barrelled surname of "Spencer-Churchill" as used since 1817 remains in the family, though some members have preferred to style themselves "Churchill".

The 7th Duke was the paternal grandfather of the British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, born at Blenheim Palace on 30 November 1874.

The present (11th) Duke is John George Vanderbilt Henry Spencer-Churchill.

After his leadership in the victory against the French in the Battle of Blenheim on 13 August 1704, the 1st Duke was honoured by Queen Anne granting him the royal manor of Woodstock, and building him a house at her expense to be called Blenheim. Construction started in 1705 and the house was completed in 1722, the year of the 1st Duke's death. Blenheim Palace has since remained in the Churchill and Spencer-Churchill family.

Dukes and Duchesses are buried in Blenheim Palace's chapel. Most other members of the Spencer-Churchill family are interred in St. Martin's parish churchyard at Bladon, a short distance from the palace.

Juan Pantoja de la Cruz - Élisabeth de Valois


“Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue)”, 1966, Mark Rothko.



“The Gold of the Azure”, 1967, Joan Miró.


“Smugglers”, 1890, Ivan Aivazovsky.


“Moonlight”, 1882, John Atkinson Grimshaw.



“Moon Rising at the Staffelalp”, Ernst Kirchner.


“Evening Landscape with Rising Moon”, 1889, Vincent van Gogh


Number 4 (Gray and Red) ~ Jackson Pollock


Sir Henry Raeburn - The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch

 
The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, better known by its shorter title The Skating Minister, is an oil painting by Sir Henry Raeburn in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. It was practically unknown until about 1949; today, however, it is one of Scotland's best known paintings. It is considered an icon of Scottish culture, painted during one of the most remarkable periods in the country's history, the Scottish Enlightenment.
The clergyman portrayed in this painting is the Reverend Robert Walker. He was a Church of Scotland minister who was born on 30 April 1755 in Monkton, Ayrshire. As a child, Walker's father had been minister of the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam, so the young Robert almost certainly learnt to skate on the frozen canals of the Netherlands. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Edinburgh in 1770 at the age of fifteen. He married Jean Fraser in 1778 and had five children. He became a member of the Royal Company of Archers in 1779 and their chaplain in 1798.
He was minister of the Canongate Kirk as well as being a member of the Edinburgh Skating Club, the first figure skating club formed anywhere in the world.
 The club met on Duddingston Loch as shown in the painting, or on Lochend loch to its northeast between Edinburgh and Leith, when these lochs were suitably frozen.
In March 2005, a curator from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery suggested that the painting was by the French artist Henri-Pierre Danloux, rather than Sir Henry Raeburn. Once this information had been brought to the attention of the Gallery, the label on the painting was altered to read "Recent research has suggested that the picture was actually painted....by Henri-Pierre Danloux." Since this time, many people have debated the idea of this. It has been argued that Danloux was in Edinburgh during the 1790s, which happens to be the time period when The Skating Minister was created. Supposedly the canvas and scale of the painting appears to be that of a French painter, although Raeburn critics argue otherwise.

Despite continuing controversy about its attribution, The Skating Minister was sent to New York City in 2005 to be exhibited in Christie's for Tartan Day, an important Scottish celebration. James Holloway, director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, told The Scotsman newspaper that "my gut reaction is that it is by Raeburn." The newspaper reported that "it is understood that Sir Timothy Clifford, director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland, now accepts the painting is a Raeburn."

Sweet Peas ~ Theo van Rysselberghe



The Shoot (1876) monet


The great mans signature


Passion


From LLR Books available on Amazon.com






Waterloo Bridge, Misty Weather ~ Claude Monet

Waterloo Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The name of the bridge is in memory of the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Thanks to its location at a strategic bend in the river, the views of London (Westminster, the South Bank and London Eye to the west, the City of London and Canary Wharf to the east) from the bridge are widely held to be the finest from any spot at ground level.

 
"The Bridge of Sighs" is a famous poem of 1844 by Thomas Hood concerning the suicide of a homeless young woman who threw herself from Waterloo Bridge in London.
 
Although Thomas Hood (1799–1845) is usually regarded as a humorous poet, towards the end of his life, when he was on his sick bed, he wrote a number of poems commenting on contemporary poverty. These included "The Song of the Shirt", "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Labourer". "The Bridge of Sighs" is particularly well-known because of its novel meter, complex three syllable rhymes, varied rhyming scheme and pathetic subject matter.
 
The poem describes the woman as having been immersed in the grimy water, but having been washed so that whatever sins she may have committed are obliterated by the pathos of her death.
 
Make no deep scrutiny
 Into her mutiny
   Rash and undutiful:
 Past all dishonour,
 Death has left on her
   Only the beautiful.
 
Several clues in the poem, which harps upon beauty, sins and scorn, hint that the woman was pregnant and had been thrown out of her home.
 
Sisterly, brotherly,
 Fatherly, motherly
   Feelings had changed:
 Love, by harsh evidence,
 Thrown from its eminence;
 Even God's providence
   Seeming estranged.

Art


Evelyn de Morgan’s paintings




 (Wikimedia)
Evelyn de Morgan’s paintings usually indicate their blatant symbolism by their (subtly or unsubtly) implausible settings.
In The Crown of Glory, though—which de Morgan painted in 1896—the scene, though obviously invented, doesn’t have the same immediate feeling of impossibility.
Certainly it isn’t a precise depiction of the classical world: de Morgan has no interest in the careful historicity of Alma-Tadema. The fish at the edge of the tapestry or fresco behind her evoke both her husband’s ceramic tiles and the ancient Roman motifs that inspired him. The little telamon and caryatid that support the bookshelf again suggest the classical world, while the raised-cord-bound books on them are clearly of more modern origin. The three-legged table with its climbing snakes, and the subject’s own draped and gathered garments, both straddle that same line between a modern and a classical aesthetic. For the most part, though, the work looks at least internally consistent.
But perhaps the most important element—the large image towards which the subject looks as she casts off her ornaments—is a total break from even the fairly modernized Greco-Roman style of the rest of the scene.
After all, it is practically a copy of one of Giotto’s 14th-century frescoes for the Lower Basilica in Assisi, which (as Christie’s points out), de Morgan “may well have seen…on one of her numerous visits to Italy, or she may have known the design in reproduction, possibly the engraving in William Young Ottley’s Florentine School (1826) which her mentor Burne-Jones had copied in an early sketchbook (Victoria and Albert Museum).”
The result is to produce a sort of dissonance between the ornate, finely wrought Greco-Roman objects in the rest of the scene, and the incredibly simplified—even flattened—Medieval depiction of Saint Francis’ allegorical marriage to Lady Poverty.
Which is, of course, the visual equivalent of the spiritual dissonance which is suddenly brought to the attention of the painting’s subject.


Portrait of a Young Woman with Book - Ernst Liebermann


Munkacsy, Mihaly (1844-1900) - 1881 Great Flower Still Life


John Koch, End of the day



John Koch (August 18, 1909 – April 19, 1978) was an American painter, and an important figure in 20th century realist painting. His early work may be considered Impressionist. He is best known for his light-filled realist paintings of urban interiors, often featuring classical allusions, and set in his own Manhattan apartment.  As visible in the The Sculptor much of Koch's work is made up of portraits and social scenes, including cocktail parties and scenes with the artist at work with his models. He was a mentor of the painter Charles Pfahl (b. 1946). In 1953 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1954.




High Dive, art by Norman Rockwell


Look carefully


Paint


Picasso giving a drawing lesson to his children Paloma and Claude, and two friends, Cannes, France, 1957


Gustave Courbet - 1866, Calm Sea


Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (French: 1819 –  1877) was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement (characterized by the paintings of Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix) with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work. “I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.' 


Gondolier (1905), John Singer Sargent


Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, 1888-1978), I Tulipani, 1973


Giorgio de Chirico July 10, 1888 – November 20, 1978) was a Greek-born Italian artist. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists.

Metaphysical art (Italian: Pittura metafisica), was a style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 mostly in the works of de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began with Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality, 'painting that which cannot be seen'.De Chirico, his younger brother Alberto Savinio, and Carrà formally established the school and its principles in 1917.


While Futurism staunchly rejected the past, other modern movements identified a nostalgia for the now faded Classical grandeur of Italy as a major influence in their art. Giorgio de Chirico first developed the style that he later called Metaphysical Painting while in Milan.
It was in the more sedate surroundings of Florence, however, that he subsequently developed his emphasis on strange, eerie spaces, based upon the Italian piazza. Many of de Chirico's works from his Florence period evoke a sense of dislocation between past and present, between the individual subject and the space he or she inhabits. These works soon drew the attention of other artists such as Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi.

In 1917, in the midst of the First World War, Carrà and de Chirico spent time in Ferarra where they further developed the Metaphysical Painting style that was later to attract the attention of the French Surrealists. The Metaphysical school proved short-lived; it came to an end about 1920 because of dissension between de Chirico and Carrà over who had founded the group.



After 1919, he became interested in traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work.

In the early 1920s, the Surrealist writer André Breton discovered one of De Chirico's metaphysical paintings on display in Paul Guillaume's Paris gallery, and was enthralled.
Numerous young artists who were similarly affected by De Chirico's imagery became the core of the Paris Surrealist group centered around Breton. In 1924 De Chirico visited Paris and was accepted into the group, although the surrealists were severely critical of his post-metaphysical work.

De Chirico met and married his first wife, the Russian ballerina Raissa Gurievich in 1925, and together they moved to Paris. His relationship with the Surrealists grew increasingly contentious, as they publicly disparaged his new work; by 1926 he had come to regard them as "cretinous and hostile". They soon parted ways in acrimony. In 1928 he held his first exhibition in New York City and shortly afterwards, London. He wrote essays on art and other subjects, and in 1929 published a novel entitled Hebdomeros, the Metaphysician.
In 1930, De Chirico met his second wife, Isabella Pakszwer Far, a Russian, with whom he would remain for the rest of his life. Together they moved to Italy in 1932, finally settling in Rome in 1944. In 1948 he bought a house near the Spanish Steps which is now a museum dedicated to his work.

In 1939, he adopted a neo-Baroque style influenced by Rubens.[6] De Chirico's later paintings never received the same critical praise as did those from his metaphysical period. He resented this, as he thought his later work was better and more mature. He nevertheless produced backdated "self-forgeries" both to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of revenge—retribution for the critical preference for his early work.[8] He also denounced many paintings attributed to him in public and private collections as forgeries.


He remained extremely prolific even as he approached his 90th year. In 1974 he was elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. He died in Rome on November 20, 1978.