The exhibition “Giorgio de Chirico and America” originated as part of the Curatorial Studies program at Hunter College, and it is impressive and good looking.[1] Professor Emily Braun and graduate students in art and art history have mounted a show that devotees of modern art and, in particular, Surrealism will find of interest. “De Chirico and America” takes as its basis the critical fortunes of Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) as they have played out in the United States. De Chirico’s standing as “The Father of Surrealism” rests on his early work, the “Metaphysical” paintings created roughly between 1910 and 1918, and there has been an almost unanimous critical consensus that it does, indeed, constitute his finest period and true achievement. His later paintings, however, are usually dismissed as an embarrassing descent into self-parody. Take into account de Chirico’s repudiation of the Metaphysical paintings and subsequent forgeries of them for financial gain, and you have one of the more curious careers—and characters—in twentieth-century art.

It is surprising, then, to learn that early de Chirico was practically unknown in the United States until 1935. His initial renown stateside came in 1928 with an exhibition at the Valentine Gallery in New York with work that postdates the Metaphysical paintings. (Alfred Stieglitz had a group of de Chirico paintings as early as 1914 but failed to find an audience for them.) It comes as something of a shock to learn that paintings now commonly regarded as inferior should have been enthusiastically