Hebdomeros: A Novel
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Publication Date: 2025
By Giorgio de Chirico. Introduction by Fabio Benzi Forthcoming May 2025 This seminal 1929 surrealist novel by the painter Giorgio de Chirico merges the realms of dream and reality.
In the artist’s only novel, de Chirico invites the reader into a world where language, time, space, and meaning are fluid, highlighting themes of mystery, myth, and the uncanny. Following the titular character Hebdomeros as he embarks on a series of philosophical musings and bizarre experiences divorced from a specific place or time, Hebdomeros embraces ambiguity in a profound exploration of the subconscious mind. Highly visual passages evoke the landscapes and compositions of de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, and non sequiturs mirror the freedom that Surrealism allowed for in art of all categories.
An introduction by the scholar Fabio Benzi contextualizes de Chirico’s work within a broader modernist framework, highlighting its influence on surrealism and its resonance with the literary and artistic movements of the early twentieth century.
Details
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Contributors: Giorgio de Chirico, Fabio Benzi, ekphrasis
Publication Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781644231630
Retail: $15 | $20 CAN | £10.95
Designer: Mike Dyer
Printer: Verona Libri, Verona
Binding: Softcover
Dimensions: 4.25 × 7 in | 10.8 × 17.8 cm
Pages: 216
Reproductions: 1 illustration
Artist and Contributors
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico, born in Greece in 1888, was an Italian painter known for founding the Scuola Metafisica art movement, which greatly influenced Surrealism. His most well-known works feature Roman arcades, long shadows, mannequins, and disorienting perspectives, inspired by the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and by Greek mythology. After 1919, he embraced traditional painting techniques, working in a neoclassical and neo-Baroque style while occasionally returning to metaphysical themes.
Fabio Benzi
Fabio Benzi is an expert on Giorgio de Chirico, futurism, and European avant-garde movements. He is full professor of the history of contemporary art at the University of Chieti-Pescara and a member of the board of the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico. He has written seminal publications on twentieth-century Italian art and has curated exhibitions worldwide.
ekphrasis
Dedicated to publishing rare, out-of-print, and newly commissioned texts as accessible paperback volumes the ekphrasis series is part of David Zwirner Books’s ongoing effort to publish new and surprising pieces of writing on visual culture.
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