The “Dying Centaur” from the collection of Generali Italia in Rome will be on tour first in Paris and then in Hamburg on the occasion of the exhibition “De Chirico and the invention of metaphysical painting”.

One of the greatest masterpieces of Generali’s artistic heritage – Dying Centaur by Giorgio De Chirico, oil on canvas, 1909 – will be displayed at the exhibition De Chirico and the invention of metaphysical painting touring from Paris (Orangerie Museum) to Hamburg (Kunsthalle) from September 2020 to April 2021. The painting, which is part of Generali Italia collection hosted in Rome, was made available for the exposition within the framework of Generali Valore Cultura, the program for promoting and making great art accessible to the public.

The Dying Centaur represents the mythological inspiration and Greek roots of the “Pictor Optimus”, who was born in 1888 in Vòlos, Thessaly, the land of the battle of the Centaurs. The centaur was a recurring theme in romantic and Parnassian poetry and linked this brilliant protagonist of twentieth century art to his first Swiss master, Arnold Böcklin, a leading exponent of Symbolism. De Chirico was deeply inspired by his paintings full of realistic details, images shifting from dream to reality and living mythological figures.

Many other works will be exhibited in France and Germany coming from major international museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, private collections and Italian museums such as Pinacoteca di Brera, Museo del Novecento in Milan, the MART in Rovereto, the GAM in Turin and the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice. Generali’s painting was last exhibited at Giorgio De Chirico, a retrospective curated by Luca Massimo Barbero at Palazzo Reale in Milan, which ended in January 2020.