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Alberto Savinio , born as Andrea Francesco Alberto de Chirico (25 August 1891 – 5 May 1952) was a Greek-Italian writer, painter, musician, journalist, essayist, playwright, set designer and composer. He was the younger brother of 'Metaphysical art' painter Giorgio de Chirico. His work often dealt with philosophy and psychology themes, and he was also heavily concerned with the philosophy of art.Capozzi, Rocco, and Luca Somigli. "Alberto Savinio". Dictionary of Literary Biography. p. 264. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2002. Print.
Throughout his life, Savinio composed five operas, Opera Composers:S. Opera.Stanford.edu. Stanford University, Web. 15 October 2009. and authored at least forty-seven books, including multiple autobiographies and memoirs. He also extensively wrote and produced works for the theatre. His work received mixed reviews during his lifetime. This was often due to his generally pervasive use of modernist techniques. He was influenced by Apollinaire, Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and Fernand Léger, and had a significant influence on the Surrealism.
In addition to his homeschooling, Andrea also enjoyed a strong musical education. At the age of twelve, he graduated from the Athens Conservatory with a concentration in piano and music composition. When he was fourteen, his father died. In response, Andrea composed a requiem in his father's memory. Andrea's family then returned to their ethnic homeland of Italy. Staying briefly in Italy, the family again relocated, this time to Munich, Germany. While living in Germany, Andrea began to be tutored in piano and composition by renowned musician Max Reger. While under Reger's tutelage, Andrea composed his first piece to receive critical acclaim, a three-act opera, Carmela; as well as an opera of lesser acclaim, Il tesoro del Rampsenita. Carmela was quickly noticed by composer Pietro Mascagni, and music publisher Giulio Ricordi. He was part of the third generation of Lombard line.
By 1911, when Andrea was twenty, his music had become popular enough to be performed in public in Munich. The same year, Andrea set out on his own, moving to Paris, France an epicenter of activity for the European avant-garde and modernist movements. In Paris, he befriended Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the foremost poets, critics, and artists at large in the avant-garde movement. While living in Paris, Andrea also became acquainted with a range of writers and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and Fernand Léger. Andrea developed an interest in the art of mime during this period, as well.
In 1914, largely in an effort to differentiate himself from his increasingly famous artist-brother, Giorgio de Chirico, Andrea adopted the penname Alberto Savinio. Savinio founded the musical movement Sincerismo (Sincerism) that same year. Sincerismo largely abandoned polyphony and harmony in favor of dissonance and rhythm as its primary musical characteristics. That year also saw the publication of Les Chants de la mi-mort ( The Songs of Half-Death), a dramatic poem including original illustrations and a piano suite accompaniment, both also created by Savinio. Les Chants de la mi-mort was written primarily in French, but also included passages written in Italian. The poem consisted of a single act, containing four loosely linked scenes. Les Chants de la mi-mort dealt largely with the concept of sleep (interpretatively referred to as "The Half Death") and was filled with odd, mechanical toy-like characters. This poem's description of the faceless dummy later became a hallmark in the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico.Michelangelo. Giornale Nuovo: Alberto Savinio. spamula.net Web. 12 October 2009.
In 1924, the Metropolitan Opera of New York performed his ballet Perseus. Andrea de Chirico or Alberto Savinio Surrealist.com, Web. 15 October 2009 1925 saw the publication of his second novel, La Casa Ispirata ( The Haunted House). Set in 1910 Paris, the novel tells the story of the protagonist-narrator, who is apparently renting a room from a typical bourgeois house, which Savinio describes as being "inhabited by Ghosts". The novel is, in many ways, a darkly comic and grotesque revue of modern life. The scenes of the novel, are at once hyper real and fantastically abstract, with great attention being given to the unconscious.
This year also brought the beginning of collaboration with his brother in Luigi Pirandello's Teatro d'Arte in Rome, Italy. The theater had always been a favorite medium for Savinio as it was in many ways a crossroads of the visual, musical and linguistic creativities. Savinio immersed himself in every aspect of the theater, from scripting, to set design. While working at the Teatro d'Arte he wrote Capitan Ulisse, a three-act drama considered fundamental to his body of work. The play was advertised in 1926, but not actually performed due to problems in the theater company. The play was eventually published in 1934, and staged at the Anton Giulio Bragaglia Theater in Rome in 1938. Also while working at the Teatro d'Arte, Savinio met Maria Morino, and proceeded to marry her the following year.
In 1926, Savinio returned to Paris, and began to paint seriously. In 1927, he gave his first one-man show as a painter, at the Bernheim Gallery in Paris. Savinio's contributions to the Avant-Garde movement during this period sharply contrast with the provincialism that was favored by the National Fascist Party in Italy at this time. Angelica o la Notte di Maggio ( Angelica or the Night in May), which was a parodical and surreal revisitation of the Ancient Greek myth of Eros and Psyche was published this year, as well. The novel tells the story of Angelica, a poor actress working in a second rate theater in Greece at the end of the nineteenth-century and Baron Felix von Rothspeer, a loveless, older aristocrat. In many ways, Savinio makes the theater a central character in the plot; it is painted as a place where the senses and romance can be deeply explored and discovered.
In 1928, Savinio's daughter, Angelica, was born in Paris; his son, Ruggero, was then born in 1934. Both of his children were named for characters from Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516). During this period of his life, he was primarily occupied with literary, musical and artistic criticism.
There is evidence to suggest, however, that their relationship frayed in later life. Although their deceased sister Adele appears in and is mentioned frequently in Savinio's memoirs and autobiographies, Giorgio fails to appear at all in any of them.
From a very young age, Savinio's piano playing impressed critics nearly unanimously. Guillaume Apollinaire said of it:
Judgment of his body of work as a whole was seen in 1954, when the Venice Biennale created a room devoted solely to Savinio's artistic legacy.
According to the art historian Jean Clair, the works of Savinio and his brother Giorgio de Chirico were the basis of both the surrealist movement and magic realism.
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