Alberto Savinio Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Alberto Savinio was born in Athens in 1891 with the name Andrea de Chirico, brother of the famous artist Giorgio de Chirico. Following his first stay in Paris in 1910 he chose to call himself Alberto Savinio. Read the full biography

Alberto Savinio Biography

Alberto Savinio was born in Athens in 1891 with the name Andrea de Chirico, brother of the famous artist Giorgio de Chirico. Following his first stay in Paris in 1910 he chose to call himself Alberto Savinio. The father of the de Chirico brothers, engineer Evaristo, belonged to a distinguished family of Italian diplomats who lived in St. Petersburg and then in Constantinople. After the death of their father in 1905, the two brothers, accompanied by their mother Gemma, abandoned Greece and after a short stay in Italy in Venice and Milan to discover their country of origin, they moved to Munich where Giorgio attended the Academy of Fine Arts and Savinio took lessons in harmony and counterpoint from the famous composer Max Reger. During this time in Germany, both brothers were inspired by the thoughts of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Otto Weininger, as well as the music of Wagner and the painting of Arnold Böcklin. Savinio spent a period in Milan with his mother to try to bring out his activity as a composer through the Casa Ricordi and, at the same time, cultivated an active literary writing activity. In June 1917, Savinio was sent as a modern Greek interpreter to the Eastern Front in Thessaloniki. He sent literary texts to many Italian and foreign avant-garde magazines, including Tristan Tzara's "Dada" magazine. After the war he returned to music, composing the ballet "Vita dell'uomo" in 1946 and staging the scenes for many operas at La Scala in Milan, including Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex" and Stravinsky's "The Firebird" in 1950. In 1952 he died suddenly in Rome.