To mark the centenary of Surrealism, organized by the Centre Pompidou and the Association Atelier André Breton, Tornabuoni Art is presenting an exhibition dedicated to Metaphysical Painting, an Italian art current that was both a precursor and a parent to André Breton’s movement, and to its ideator: Giorgio de Chirico. Ten works by the man known as the Pictor Optimus are on display, alongside canvases by six artists of his generation who, like him, immersed themselves in the pictorial universe of dreams, silence and interiority: Felice Casorati, Giorgio Morandi, René Paresce, Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini and Mario Tozzi.

The Surrealists’ discovery of De Chirico’s work remains among the most famous historiographical legends of twentieth-century art. In 1916, Breton is said to have been so struck by a work by De Chirico in Paul Guillaume’s gallery window that he got off the bus to purchase it. Yves Tanguy, too, recounts a similar episode that led to his lifelong interest in representing dreams. René Magritte, in turn, describes being moved to tears by a reproduction of a de Chirico painting in 1922—an encounter which triggered his transition from Dadaism to Surrealism. Magritte regarded the Italian artist as «the greatest painter of our time», writing that «De Chirico was the first to dream what should be painted, not how it should be painted.»