Giorgio Morandi

Cesare Brandi, Rome (a gift from the artist in 1958)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Giorgio Morandi's meticulously composed still-lifes dominated throughout his career. Like others of his generation, he looked at the Italian art of the early Renaissance with fresh eyes, simultaneously conscious of the legacy of tradition as well as the regional and rustic aspects of the Italian cultural heritage. Additionally vital was the legacy of Cézanne, whose intense focus on reality and individual way of seeing encouraged Morandi to discover the simple geometric solidity of everyday objects. This was to become his subject, although his style moved through several very distinct phases. The objects, invariably household items such as bottles, jars, pitchers and bowls, were laid out with the calculated precision of a classical composition, yet the way in which they are painted establishes their presence as self-contained forms in space.

This Natura morta painted around 1957 is an exemplary exponent of the artist's investigation into the spatial relationships between everyday objects, in this instance including four bottles and jugs of various colours, shapes and sizes. Negative space between the objects assumes confrontational immediacy and shadows are reduced to quivering outlines that frame the simplified shapes. Morandi is known to have spent hours, even days, setting up the composition in his studio, and the present work exemplifies this calculated precision which enabled him to create a perfect harmony, that is to be found in his most accomplished works. Morandi never tired of using the same objects, and found a challenge in rearranging them and in making slight changes to the angle of vision and lighting, thus creating numerous variations on a theme, with an ever-changing dynamic between the objects themselves, as well as between the objects and their background.

The present work comes from the Collection of the Late Cesare Brandi (1906-1988), who acquired it directly from Morandi. Brandi played an important and diverse role as a historian of Italian art, father of the modern restoration theory and practice and a lifelong defender of the Cultural Heritage. He published numerous articles on modern approaches in conservation and restoration, which were collected in his 1963 Teoria del restauro (Theory of Restoration). In 1938 he became a founder and first director of the Instituto Centrale del Restauro. In 2006-07, the European Union has organised a major international project 'Cesare Brandi, His Thought and European Debate in the XX Century' on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Brandi's birth.

Fig. 1, Morandi in his studio