Art: The Metaphysician's Last Exit

At 90, the Italian father of surrealist art dies

The painter Giorgio de Chirico died of a heart attack in Rome last week. He was 90, and his death removed one of the last connections between our day and the formative years of modern art. Nearly all who created the modernist vocabulary between 1900 and 1930 are dead. Four remain: Marc Chagall, 91; Joan Mird, 85; Sonia Delaunay, 93; and Salvador Dali, 74. None have produced much work of consequence in recent years; posterity will not have time for late Chagall or post-1939 Dali. Nevertheless, De...

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