PARIS - His beginnings were resounding and now belong to the history of art of the XXth century. Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), together with a few associates, of which Carlo Carrà is the best known, invented right before WW I, when he was just 20 years old, metaphysical painting. Human-less spaces peopled by statues and giant shadows, disconnected accumulations of objects in green and blue interiors. Though he fascinated the future Surrealists, de Chirico quickly fell out of grace. As of 1926 André Breton disavowed him, as did the avant-gardes. Yet he lived and produced for another 50 years: among the 170 works grouped together by the musée d’Art moderne, a certain number exhibit in detail this long ending parenthesis, peopled with glossy horses, wrinkled self-portraits and kitsch gladiators, which the self-proclaimed pictor optimus painter never wished to deny.

Giorgio de Chirico, la fabrique des rêves at the musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, from 13 February to 24 May 2009