Giorgio Morandi

Purchased directly from the artist by the family of the present owner in the 1950s

Lamberto Vitali, Morandi. Dipinti, Catalogo generale 1948-1964, Milan, 1977, vol. II, no. 879, illustrated n.p.

The canvas is not lined and there do not appear to be any traces of retouching visible under UV light. Some gentle frame rubbing to the extreme edges. A pin-sized spot of paint loss to the centre of the canvas. This work is in overall good original condition.
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Following the development of key themes in his paintings of the war years, in the early 1950s Morandi continued working towards a heightened simplicity and purity of form. His search for new compositional variations remained of central importance and he began working groups of objects into compact, often flattened and centralised, formations rendered in a lighter palette.

Painted in 1953, Natura Morta exemplifies this approach. The group of objects, including his famous creation of the upturned funnel mounted on a cylindrical tin, are carefully orchestrated within the proscribed field of vision. The simplicity of the composition creates an almost two-dimensional effect with Morandi achieving a sense of volume through the placement of the objects – light against dark – and the subsequent interplay of colour and light, rather than the precise delineation of contours or tonal modelling. In particular, the purity of the white bottles resonates against the darker objects.  Describing the startling effectiveness of these whites, Leone Minassian wrote: ‘The vibration of this inherently pallid colour is magically obtained through an incredible combination of milky gleams with an alternation of warm and cold hues. The whites are barely tinged by these light and gentle hints of colour, but the result is frankly extraordinary’ (Leone Minassian quoted in Morandi 1890-1964 (exhibition catalogue), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2008, p. 280).

In the present work Morandi goes beyond the objective recording of reality, transforming the objects in front of him into new entities and revealing not only their physical properties but their inner materiality. Giorgio de Chirico referred explicitly to this poetic aspect of Morandi's still-lifes in an article written in 1922: 'These objects are dead for us because they are immobile. But he looks at them with belief. He finds comfort in their inner structure – their eternal aspect. In this way he has contributed to the lyricism of the last important movement in European art: the metaphysics of the common object. However much we may be aware that appearances deceive, we often look at familiar things with the eyes of one who sees and does not know' (Giorgio de Chirico quoted in Giorgio Morandi (exhibition catalogue), Arts Council of Great Britain, 1970, p. 6).