The Double Dream of Spring
Giorgio de Chirico
Italian, born Greece. 1888–1978
Paris, January-May 1915
An oil-on-canvas painting in which Giorgio de Chirico sets a painting-within-a-painting on an easel amid a sunlit, empty piazza to conjure an uncanny, dreamlike meditation on space and memory.
What strikes you first is the framed, schematic interior drawn on the easel, flanked by two aloof, mannequin-like figures and a distant red balloon, all arranged in a hard-edged, sunlit emptiness that freezes time and warps scale.
A landmark of de Chirico’s metaphysical period, it helped invent a visual language of uncanny juxtapositions and ambiguous perspective that directly influenced Surrealism and modern explorations of memory and subjectivity.
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
22 1/8 x 21 3/8" (56.2 x 54.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of James Thrall Soby
Accession
138.1957
Palette
Exhibitions
