Giorgio Morandi

Giorgio Morandi's (1890–1964) steady pursuit of a poetic vision in still-life and landscape painting (as well as engravings and etchings) has secured him a singular and revered position in the history of modern art. While drawing on the achievements of Giotto, Cézanne, the metaphysical painters and the Cubists, Morandi's work finally resembles no one else's, and quietly defies paraphrase: everything is enigmatically clarified in the work itself, in all its apparent simplicity, on terms entirely specific to the artist's compositional gifts, in which respect he might almost be described as the Erik Satie of painting.
The original writings and interviews collected in this substantial new volume trace Morandi's various influences, illuminate the atmosphere of Bologna that so characterized the artist's sensibility, and allow us to analyze the myth that has formed around his life and personality. Karen Wilkin, editor of this volume and the author of monographs on Georges Braque, Anthony Caro, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Kenneth Noland and David Smith, has assembled an important contribution to the critical understanding of this great artist.

This volume positions Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) as a paradigmatic 20th-century figure: a man who lived through two world wars and experienced the full impact of the era’s disillusionments. Against this bleak backdrop, he sought stringent order and formal harmony, while leaving room for uncertainty and surprise. This clothbound volume spotlights the artist’s paintings and works on paper from the 1920s to the '60s, as well as a wealth of unpublished documents and photographs recently excavated from the Morandi family archives. Marilena Pasquali, an art historian and leading Morandi expert, interprets these materials, connecting them with the arc of his career. Alongside writings by other art historians, Pasquali casts Morandi’s art as an ongoing response to the tumultuous, dispiriting times in which he lived.

Antonio and Matilde Catanese were avid collectors of Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964). Acquiring his works in the 1930s, the Milanese couple became among the first to contribute to his fame. The Catanese collection, presented in this monograph, functions as a microcosm of the artist’s oeuvre, thanks to its quantity and chronological spread covering almost all the years of the artist’s activity as well as the breadth of techniques and themes represented in its holdings. The collection includes 15 paintings made between 1914 and 1959, and three watercolors representing the abiding themes of Morandi’s work, as indicated by titles such as Still Life, Landscape and Flowers. Also included is a Self-Portrait of 1914. Another integral part of the collection is its almost complete series of etchings. All of the works have been the subjects of scientific investigations, preliminary to restoration and conservation, conducted by the University of Urbino, the results of which are presented here.

Italian painter Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) was a poet of the ordinary. Best known for his still lifes, Morandi arranged simple objects—he tended to favor bottles, vases and bowls, earning him the patronizing description “the Italian painter of bottles”—in seemingly simple compositions in modestly scaled paintings. Bathed in flickering light and muted, earthy color, Morandi’s subtle and contemplative paintings are disarmingly absorbing, imbued with deep feeling and a reassuring solidity. Small and sublime at the same time, his paintings are generous to attentive viewers, and have drawn rapturous praise from artists and critics alike.

Morandi devoted his career to the pursuit of what he called “the essence of things.” “Even in as simple a subject” as a still life, Morandi explained, “a great painter can achieve a majesty of vision and an intensity of feeling to which we immediately respond.” He pursued this goal over the course of about 50 years, in the execution of some 1,350 oil paintings and 133 etchings.

Featuring a selection of Morandi’s oil and watercolor paintings, drawings and etchings, this publication ranges from Morandi’s renowned still lifes to his elegant flower vases and lonely landscapes. The book presents the whole of the artist’s silent yet profound innovation, halfway between reality and abstraction, and reveals why Morandi has remained a constant source of inspiration for generations of artists.

This volume showcases 116 masterpieces arranged into the four major themes that characterize Giorgio Morandi’s work: self portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and flowers. The collection represents all the various expressive techniques used by Morandi over the years, including paint, etching, drawing and watercolor.The volume is the catalog of an outstanding exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum in New York and by the Museo d’Arte Moderna in Bologna. The exhibition will be open in New York from September 16 to December 14, 2008 and in Bologna from January 22 to April 12, 2009.The exhibition and the catalog also contain a number of photographs of Morandi’s studio and quotes from his admirers, as well as the memorable 1958 interview with Edouard Roditi.

Maria Cristina Bandera is Director of the Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi a Firenze. Renato Miracco is the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York. Janet Abramowicz was a Senior Lecturer for twenty years in the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University. Flavio Fergonzi is a Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Udine. Maria Mimita Lamberti is a Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Torino. Neville Rowley is currently doing a PhD at the Sorbonne, where he taught for three years. Lorenza Selleri is Curator at the Museo Morandi, Bologna.