Metaphysical art (Italian: Pittura metafisica) was a style of painting that flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920 in the works of the Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The movement began with Chirico, whose dreamlike works with sharp contrasts of light and shadow often had a vaguely threatening, mysterious quality, 'painting that which cannot be seen'. De Chirico, his younger brother Alberto Savinio, and Carrà formally established the school and its principles in 1917.