Giorgio de Chirico Quotes

To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream.

One must picture everything in the world as an enigma, and live in the world as if in a vast museum of strangeness.

There is much more mystery in the shadow of a man walking on a sunny day, than in all religions of the world.

Everything has two aspects: the current aspect, which we see nearly always and which ordinary men see, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals may see in moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical abstraction.

When I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful.

If a work of art is to be truly immortal, it must pass quite beyond the limits of the human world, without any sign of common sense and logic. In this way the work will draw nearer to dream and to the mind of a child.

We must hold enormous faith in ourselves.

Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life.

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.

It used to be that painters were crazy and sculptors clever. Today it's the other way around.

It is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means 'absolutely nothing' from the logical point of view.. ..should speak so strongly in us, evoke such agony or joy, that we feel compelled to paint.