Alberto Savinio
Alberto Savinio, born Andrea de Chirico on August 25, 1891, in Athens, Greece, was a multifaceted Italian artist known for his contributions to music, literature, and visual arts. He came from a family involved in engineering and the arts, with his brother being the notable Surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico. Savinio displayed his musical talents early on, graduating from the Athens Conservatory and composing his first opera by the age of fifteen. After relocating to Paris in 1911, he adopted the pseudonym Alberto Savinio to carve out his own artistic identity, distinct from his brother’s burgeoning fame.
Savinio’s work is characterized by an experimental approach that spans various forms, including ballet, drama, and poetry, often pushing traditional boundaries. His experiences during World War I, particularly his stint in Greece, inspired his avant-garde autobiographical work, "Hermaphrodito." Post-war, he became a prominent figure in the Italian cultural scene, known for his provocative critique of societal norms through works like "La casa ispirata" and "Tragedia dell'infanzia." By the late 1920s, he returned to Paris, actively engaging with the artistic community through writing, painting, and editing a literary journal. Savinio’s career culminated in a return to theater before his death in Rome on May 5, 1952, leaving behind a legacy that embodies the spirit of early 20th-century European artistic experimentation.
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Alberto Savinio
Writer
- Born: August 25, 1891
- Birthplace: Athens, Greece
- Died: May 5, 1952
- Place of death: Rome, Italy
Biography
Alberto Savinio is the pseudonym of Andrea de Chirico, who was born in Athens, Greece, on August 25, 1891. His father was an Italian engineer contracted to help construct a national rail system in Greece; his brother was the Surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico. As part of a rigorous system of homeschooling, Savinio was encouraged in artistic endeavors. By the age of twelve, Savinio had demonstrated musical gifts, graduating in piano and composition from the Athens Conservatory.
After his father’s death in 1906, the family moved to Munich, where the precocious Savinio continued his studies; by the age of fifteen, he had completed his first opera. In 1911, Savinio moved to Paris and quickly earned a reputation for savage and passionate piano recitals and compositions that experimented with the concept of atonal constructions and dissonance. It was at this time that he changed his name to Alberto Savinio, a pseudonym drawn from an obscure French writer, as much to distinguish himself from his brother, who was emerging as an experimental artist, as to make a philosophical statement about self-definition.
Over the next several years, Savinio restlessly tested numerous artistic expressions—including ballet, drama, and poetry—determined to push conventional forms to provocative, audacious extremes in an uninhibited celebration of the innovative artist. In 1915, Savinio returned to Italy to enlist in the army, where he was assigned medical duty at a field hospital. The experience of World War I hardly interested Savino until he was sent to Greece to serve as an interpreter, and there he was energized by returning to his childhood home. Inspired, he turned to autobiography in Hermaphrodito (1918; The Departure of the Argonauts, 1986), a dense autobiographical experiment, part prose, part poetry, centered loosely on vignettes drawn from war, a maddeningly avant-garde work that alienated critics and readers alike.
After the war, Savinio lived in Rome, where he emerged as a dominant commentator, most often outrageous and provocative, of the postwar Italian cultural scene. He also was drawn to the theater, writing short pieces, designing extravagant sets and costuming, and often scoring productions. His second novel, La casa ispirata, draws on grotesque dream-like Freudian imagery to dissect the repressed middle-class life using the unsettling metaphor of a house falling into disrepair. Wanting to position the artist against such a backdrop of conformity, Savinio completed Tragedia dell’infanzia (1937; Tragedy of Childhood, 1991), which tells of an imaginative child destroyed by a society that cannot accept nonconformity.
By the end of the 1920’s, Savinio returned to Paris and immersed himself in that city’s artistic community. With the inexhaustible energy of a Renaissance figure, Savinio founded and edited a literary journal, painted provocative canvases, experimented with short stories that fictionalized historic figures, and published philosophical manifestos on the future of art. By the 1950’s, Savinio returned his attention to the stage. He died of a heart attack in Rome on May 5, 1952, just days after directing a massive musical festival.
Impossible to categorize, Savinio embodies the fierce experimental passion of European bohemians at the beginning of the twentieth century, who were determined to upend conventions in an effort to test the boundaries of imagination.