(Bologna 1890–1964) Natura morta, circa 1948, oil on canvas mounted on canvas, 26 x 20.5 cm, framed, (PP)

Provenance:
Galerie Krugier et Cie, Geneva (verso adhesive label)
Galleria dell’Oca, Rome (verso adhesive label)
Galleria Russo, Rome (verso signature of R. Russo)
Private Collection, Italy

Literature:
Lamberto Vitali, Giorgio Morandi, Catalogo generale dei dipinti, Electa, Milan, 1977, no. 598 with ill. (with incorrect dimensions, handwritten correction by Lamberto Vitali, Milan 4 April 1982 available)

The main motifs in the work of Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi were landscapes, groups of houses, still lifes and paintings of flowers. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna in the early 20th century. He investigated the work of Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso,following a brief exploration in 1913 of the work of the Futurist artists, whose style and interests did not, however, continue to influence his practice. In contrast, one can see his interest in the metaphysical painting of de Chirico in his oeuvre in his painterly rendering of shadows. Around 1920 Morandi discovered his own visual language, which evoked Cubist ideas in its reduced choice of subject matter and repertoire of forms.
This work, Natura morta, bears witness to the artist’s employment of this restful motif, characteristic of his oeuvre, with its interplay between flatness and space and limited palette, the individual tones of which are nonetheless developed to stand out from one another. Much of Morandi’s oeuvre from the 1920s onwards features Purist still lifes with groupings of bottles, jugs, vases, bowls and vessels – though seldom food – on monochrome grounds. The “simple volumes of the boxes, vases or bottles” were, for Morandi, “representative of a reality, which is revealed for the first time in its richness, in its essence, when the observing eye witnesses what marks it out: the abundance and inexhaustibility of its forms.” (E.-G. Güse/ F. A. Morat (eds), Giorgio Morandi, Munich 2008)