Quote from De Chirico's letter to Mr. Fritz Gartz, Florence, 26 Jan. 1910; from  LETTERS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, GEMMA DE CHIRICO AND ALBERTO DE CHIRICO TO FRITZ GARTZ, MILAN-FLORENCE, 1908-1911 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/559-567Metafisica7_8.pdf, p. 562 
1908 - 1920
                                    
“What I have created here in Italy is neither very big nor profound (in the old sense of the word), but formidable. This summer I painted paintings that are the most profound that exist in the absolute. Let me explain these things somewhat.... profoundness as I understand it, and as Nietzsche intended it, is elsewhere than where it has been searched for until now.”
            My paintings are small (the biggest is 50 x 70 cm), but each of them is an enigma, each contains a poem, an atmosphere (Stimmung) and a promise that you can not find in other paintings. It brings me immense joy to have painted them – when I exhibit them, possibly in Munich this spring, it will be a revelation for the whole world 
Quote from De Chirico's letter to Mr. Fritz Gartz, Florence, 26 Jan. 1910; from  LETTERS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, GEMMA DE CHIRICO AND ALBERTO DE CHIRICO TO FRITZ GARTZ, MILAN-FLORENCE, 1908-1911 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/559-567Metafisica7_8.pdf, p. 562 
1908 - 1920
        
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Giorgio de Chirico 23
Italian artist 1888–1978Related quotes
“The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.”
                                        
                                        Book II, Ch. 20 
Attributed
                                    
“I don't profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense.”
                                        
                                        Attributed to Laozi in self-help books and on social media, this quotation is of unknown origin and date. 
Misattributed
                                    
                                        
                                        Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (7 August 1901) 
1900s
                                    
                                        
                                        Quote, 1914, from: Foreword 
1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
                                    
Farewell Address (2003)
                                        
                                        Quote from Gauguin's unfinished essay 'Notes Synthetiques', published in the July / September 1910 issue of ' Vers et Prose' XXII, pp. 51-55, as cited in: Shannon N. Pritchard,  Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 23 
Gauguin's essay 'Notes Synthetiques' was written in Pont -Aven in 1888 and left incomplete. His essay was first published in 'Vers et Prose' XXII 
1890s - 1910s
                                    
“The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.”
As quoted in "The Michener Phenomenon" by Caryn James in The New York Times (8 September 1985)