Neo-baroque

An Italian painter, a forerunner of Surrealism. Together with Futurist Carlo Carra, Giorgio de Chirico was the creator of metaphysical painting - the most original and important style in Italian art of the early twentieth century. Despite the fact that this style did not last long, it became the main one for the artist and brought him worldwide fame. De Chirico's metaphysical paintings had a great influence on Surrealists, who saw in them the expression of the unconscious and illogical that they aspired to.The work of Giorgio de Chirico originates in German philosophy, in particular in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as in the work of Symbolist Arnold Böcklin. From them, he drew interest in the symbolism of objects and the interaction of the form and environment. Like his teachers, the artist paid much attention to the process of self-improvement and observation, trying to comprehend the inner harmony of the universe.Closely connected with the Paris avant-garde movement, de Chirico created original art, which inexplicably combined his love for classics and the feelings of emptiness and loss that are characteristic of contemporary art. In the artist’s paintings, deserted streets and towers coexist with symbolic objects and mannequins, which are not connected logically. All this, created in bright colours, creates a sense of artificiality of reality and its conventionality.

Spanish painter, graphic artist, sculptor, director and writer. One of the most famous figures in Surrealism, and author of “The Persistence of Memory”, one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century.Dalí started painting at the age of four. He created his first serious work at the age of ten. It was a small impressionistic landscape, painted on a wooden board with oil paints. Henceforth, Dali spent whole days sitting in a small, specially allocated room and painting pictures. “I wanted to be given the laundry under the roof of our house. I got it and made it my own workshop, decorating it in the way I preferred,” he remembered later. Moreover, he liked to analyze the works of famous artists. He wrote and published essays about the works of Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.