Spencer Alley: Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964)

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1920
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1943
oil on canvas
Musei Vaticani, Rome

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1946
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"Giorgio Morandi was born on July 20, 1890, in Bologna, Italy, one of the oldest and most prestigious University towns in Europe. Nearly all his life was spent there working quietly in a modest studio and apartment that he shared with his three sisters. Except for occasional trips to Venice, Florence, or Rome for exhibitions of his paintings and etchings, or summer excursions to the village of Grizzana in the Apennine hills above his native city, Morandi scarcely ever left Bologna. He was exceptionally tall, thoughtful, and soft spoken, and notwithstanding his low-key public profile – Morandi agreed to only two published interviews, both toward the end of his life – his paintings came to be known and in demand throughout Europe and North and South America. He was quickly embraced by the intellectual elite of Italy, being taken up by well-known painters, prominent writers and publishers, and distinguished art historians and professors. As early as 1934, in a public address by Roberto Longhi, then Professor of Renaissance Art at the University of Bologna and unofficial cultural czar of Italy, Morandi was recognized as perhaps the greatest living painter in his country."

– from exhibition notes (2008) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1946
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1948-49
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1949
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1950
oil on canvas
private collection

Giorgio Morandi
Still Life
1952
oil on canvas
private collection

"A picture is a gadget. It uses its technical devices to bring off its desired effects. For example, there's the question of how a picture creates depth and distance. How does it indicate which of the things it depicts are further away than which? And by how far? There are basically five ways. The first is overlapping. Things are simply laid behind one another. The second is scale. Things become smaller as they retreat. The third is ground position. Receding things are placed further upstage on a ground surface. The fourth is volume. Things use their dimensions to establish distances amongst themselves. The fifth is focus. Remoter things get blurrier. Each device is a distancer, a depth-maker. Each can be used independently; often they will be used together. They can also be used inconsistently.

The ones to pay attention to here are overlap, ground position and volume. Giorgio Morandi's still lives are famous for their quiet but tense poetry. They feature a cast of smallish inanimate objects. These are bottles, vases, bowls, jugs, cups, tubs, boxes – but no fruit or vegetables. These objects stand on a blank tabletop, and quite often backed against a wall. They're typically arranged like a group portrait, with two rows, one in front of another. They form close and nervous families – huddled, withdrawn. They appear in numerous variations on this theme. The poetry arises from a recurring trick involving the way they handle depth and distance."

– Tom Lubbock, from an exhibition review (2009) published in The Independent (London)