De Chirico was born in Volos, Greece in 1888 to Italian parents. He studied art at The Higher School of Fine Art, Athens, under the influential Greek painters Georgios Rolios and Georgios Jacobides. After the death of his father the family moved to Munich, where De Chirico studied for two years at The Academy of Fine Art. In Munich he became interested in philosophy, and in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Early in his career De Chirico was inspired by the European symbolism movement, particularly Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger. He returned to Italy in 1908 and settled in Florence. His earlier works combine a Symbolist sensitivity and an attempt to express the strong and mysterious feeling he had discovered in Nietzsche’s writings. He painted his first metaphysical painting, “Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon” in 1910. He first exhibited his works at the Salon d'Automne, Paris in 1912. In 1913 during an exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants, Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire noticed his work.