Morandi was a painter and printmaker who lived and worked for all his life in Bologna, Italy (1890-1964).  Although he made some early work that is characterized with the Cubism movement and with Metaphysical Art, the work of Morandi’s that speaks to me is of a more personal contemplation, a devotion of time to the understanding of classical considerations of composition, line, light, shade, and color. 

Morandi’s still life subjects exist quietly  within the confines of his canvas.  Each object of the composition speaks to the others as well as to the space they occupy.  The space in between each element becomes as much a participant of the whole as the objects themselves.    The spare renderings

can be seen as formal abstractions, but at the same time are recognizable as  everyday crockery.  A simultaneous and poetic occurance of humble simplicity and intellectual elegance is the result.  Morandi would return to the  same objects  years after a canvas had been completed.  Creating new compositional variations, using different juxtapositions of the objects, or looking at the same grouping of objects from different angles or vantage points, he was always finding another way to consider visual relationships. 

Morandi’s landscapes also follow this practice of simplification.  But despite the treatment of form and surface as abstract planes, it is the illusion of light and the limited but natural color that keep these forms rooted  in representation as well.  It is our choice  whether we see his landscapes as depictions of the natural world that Morandi scrutinized or the material objects he has  created as a result.

I appreciate Morandi’s calm and frank awareness and his dedication to understanding and deconstructing what he saw.  His art is a location for quiet contemplation and relief, as much as any secret garden.  In control of its content and its boundaries, Morandi’s art lifts his purposes beyond any worldy ambition or clamor for attention to exist for the artist’s and the viewer’s personal satisfaction in observation.

Kathleen Benton

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Herbert List (German, 1903-1975) Giorgio Morandi in his studio, Bologna 1953   © Herbert List Estate, Magnum Photos

Giorgio Morandi (Italian, 1890-1964), Still Life, 1951, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

Giorgio Morandi, Landscape, 1962, Private Collection, Bologna

© 2008 All rights reserved Kathleen Benton | You Can Hire an Artist

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