Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi · Bologna, 1890–1964
One of the great still-life painters of the twentieth century — a man who spent a lifetime finding the infinite in a handful of bottles.
A quiet life in Bologna
Giorgio Morandi was born in Bologna on 20 July 1890, the eldest of five children. He would spend almost his entire life in that one city, in the family apartment on Via Fondazza, sharing his days with his three sisters — Anna, Dina and Maria Teresa — none of whom married. After the death of his father in 1909 he became the head of the household, and he cultivated the reserved, contemplative temperament that would become inseparable from his art.
The same few objects, endlessly
Morandi painted, above all, still lifes: bottles, bowls, boxes, cups, vases and pitchers — the ordinary objects of his studio. He arranged and rearranged this same small cast again and again, studying the subtle changes in placement, light, scale and spatial tension that each new composition revealed. His palette was deliberately subdued — earthy greys, creams and browns, moving through muted tonal transitions — and his light was dim and diffuse, lending the work its quiet, meditative stillness. He would sometimes alter the objects themselves, coating their surfaces with paint and removing labels and reflections, until nothing remained but shape and volume.
A master of etching
He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna from 1907 to 1913, and later taught there as Professor of Etching from 1930 to 1956. Printmaking was central to his practice, and he is widely regarded as one of the great modern masters of copper-plate etching. In his youth he engaged briefly with Futurism and, between 1918 and 1922, with the Metaphysical painting of the pittura metafisica — before withdrawing into the restrained, singular language that would define him.
Recognition
Though he rarely left Bologna, his work travelled far. He was awarded the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale in 1948, the grand prize for engraving at the São Paulo Biennial in 1953, and the grand prize for painting at São Paulo in 1957. In 1962 he received the Rubens Prize of the city of Siegen. Today his paintings hang in the world’s great museums, admired for their profound economy — for the way a lifetime of attention could be given to so little, and reveal so much.
He died in Bologna on 18 June 1964, and was buried alongside his sisters in the family tomb at the Certosa di Bologna.
“Nothing is more abstract than reality.”
— Giorgio Morandi
It is this — the discipline of looking closely, and patiently, at ordinary things — that we take as our inspiration.
