A Backward Glance: Giorgio Morandi and the Old Masters
04.12.2019 - 10.06.2019
The work of Giorgio Morandi (b. 1890; d. 1964), one of the most innovative still-life painters of the twentieth century, is not easy to classify. His enigmatic compositions of bottles, vases, and boxes continue to seduce viewers with their deceptive simplicity and subjective depiction of reality.
Morandi lived in his native city of Bologna, Italy, his entire life, spending summers in the mountains of Grizzana in the Emilia-Romagna region. He resided and worked in his studio-bedroom, a quirky setting rather like a still life in itself, where he was surrounded by his favorite objects. He would configure them again and again in subtly differing arrangements, concentrating on the infinite possibilities offered by the representation of common household items.
Although Morandi left Bologna only on rare occasions, he was an accomplished time traveler. A perspicacious student of art history, he looked to a great many sources for his own formation as an artist. A Backward Glance examines a specific aspect of Morandi’s work: the role of Old Master painting in his own production. Through an analysis of the still lifes he produced from the 1920s to the 1960s, the exhibition traces the connections between these images and those by the artists Morandi appreciated and studied. This exploration reveals mechanisms related less to influence or appropriation and more to elective affinities with the artists who came before him.
A Backward Glance investigates three precedents from three European countries, focusing on premodernist, pre-nineteenth-century references. These are Spanish seventeenth-century painting and the still-life tradition, the Bolognese painters from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, and the still-life and genre works of the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin. Morandi imbued his images of vases, bottles, and boxes with all the theatricality of the Spanish Golden Age, the naturalism of the Italian Seicento, and the intimacy that Chardin brought to the world of everyday objects.
Giorgio Morandi leafing through a art publication [detail]
Photo: Libero Grandi
© Giorgio Morandi, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2019
The Exhibition
Giorgio Morandi
Still Life (Natura morta), 1920
Oil on canvas
30.5 x 44.5 cm
Istituzione Bologna Musei | Museo Morandi
© Giorgio Morandi, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2019
Jean-Siméon Chardin
The House of Cards (Le Château de cartes), n/d
Oil on canvas
82 x 66 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
© Giorgio Morandi, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2019
Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Women whispering (Donne che bisbigliano), 1735–40
Oil on canvas
26.5 x 19 cm
Istituzione Bologna Musei | Casa Morandi
© Giorgio Morandi, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2019
Artist
Morandi, Giorgio
Bolonia, 1890 | Bolonia, 1964
Did you
know that...?
MORANDI'S WAYS OF SEEING
As part of the Didaktika Project, the Museum designs didactic spaces and special activities that complement every exhibition, providing tools and resources, both in the galleries and online, to facilitate the appreciation and understanding of the works exhibited.
MORANDI’S LANDSCAPE (1927):
Morandi spent his summers in his studio in Grizzana, tucked away in the Emilian hillside. His idyllic surroundings influenced works such as his Landscape of 1927, which evokes the rich tradition of landscape painting that came before him.
MORANDI’S STILL LIFE (1952):
Morandi’s still lifes often suggest an entire world with a few objects. In paintings such as his Still Life from 1952, that world was Bologna, the city where he lived and rarely left. The bottles, vases, and boxes grouped together in this work resemble the rooftops and towers of Morandi’s native city.
MORANDI’S SELF-PORTRAIT (1917-19):
Early in his career, Morandi realized a small number of self-portraits. The best known of these is his Self Portrait from 1917–19, which reveals his fascination with portraiture from different periods in art history.
MORANDI’S FLOWERS (1916):
Flower paintings were a mainstay of Morandi’s artistic practice. His Flowers of 1916 reveals just how closely Morandi studied past examples of this genre. Morandi’s Flowers is a close approximation of the Bouquet of Flowers with China Asters and Tokyos by Henry Rousseau (b. 1844, Laval; d. 1910, Paris).