The son of an Italian engineer, he took drawing classes in Athens as a child. In 1906 his family settled in Munich, where he discovered the art of Arnold Böcklin. In 1909n he and his brother moved to Florence and Turin, whose urban architecture shaped the settings of his paintings.

In 1911, he befriended Apollinaire and Picasso in Paris. After 1915, he lived again in Italy, but retained contact with Breton and Éluard, who in 1924 began regularly publishing his paintings in the Surrealist journals. De Chirico was a member of the Office of Surrealist Research.

In the modern tradition, de Chirico's urban views combined temples, palaces, arcades, towers, factories, studios into a mysterious and tragic stage for lonely figures. His interiors of 1914-15 likewise posed riddles and suggested a voyage of discovery through unreal spaces, an aspect that deeply inspired the Surrealists. After 1925, a break with Surrealism occurred when de Chirico's style turned to a Neoclassical Romanticism.