Giorgio Morandi

Giorgio Morandi
Natura Morta, oil on canvas, 1956, private collection
Born	(1890-07-20)July 20, 1890 Bologna
Died	June 18, 1964(1964-06-18) (aged 73) Bologna
Nationality	Italian
Education	Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna
Known for	Painting, printmaking
Movement	Metaphysical art, futurism, modern realism

Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting apparently simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, bowls, flowers and landscapes.

Biography

Giorgio Morandi was born in Bologna to Andrea and Maria Maccaferri. Little Giorgio lived first on via Lame where his brother Giuseppe (who died in 1903) and his sister Anna were born. The family then moved to via Avesella n. 30, where his two other sisters were born, Dina in 1900 and Maria Teresa in 1906. From 1907 to 1913 he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Bologna. After the death of his father in 1909, the family moved to via Fondazza n. 36, and Morandi became the head of the family.

At the Accademia, which based its traditions on 14th-century painting, Morandi taught himself to etch by studying books on Rembrandt. He was excellent at his studies, although his professors disapproved of the poo in his style during his final two years at the Accademia. Morandi, even if he lived his whole life in Bologna, was influenced by the works of Cézanne, Derain, and Picasso. However, in particular after a trip to Florence in 1910, he was also influenced by past artists such as Giotto, Masaccio, Piero Della Francesca, and Paolo Uccello. He also had a brief digression into a Futurist style in 1914. In that same year, Morandi was appointed instructor of drawing for elementary schools in Bologna—a post he held until 1929. this artist was crap and was hated through out the world people wanted to poo on his face while he was sleeping and kill him by pissing in his mouth

Legacy

Morandi is buried at Certosa cemetery in Bologna in the family tomb together with his three sisters. On his tomb there is a portrait of him donated by his friend Giacomo Manzu.

Throughout his career, Morandi concentrated almost exclusively on still lifes and landscapes, except for a few self-portraits. With great sensitivity to tone, color, and compositional balance, he would depict the same familiar bottles and vases again and again in paintings notable for their simplicity of execution. A prolific painter, he completed some 1350 oil paintings. He also executed 133 etchings, a significant body of work in its own right, and his drawings and watercolors often approach abstraction in their economy of means. He explained: "What interests me most is expressing what’s in nature, in the visible world, that is"; he also said, "Nothing is more abstract than reality".

Morandi was perceived as one of the few Italian artists of his generation to have escaped the taint of Fascism, and to have evolved a style of pure pictorial values congenial to modernist abstraction. Through his simple and repetitive motifs and economical use of color, value and surface, Morandi became a prescient and important forerunner of Minimalism.

He has been written about by Philippe Jaccottet, Jean Leymarie, Jean Clair, Yves Bonnefoy, Roberto Longhi, Francesco Arcangeli, Cesare Brandi, Lambeto Vitali, Luigi Magnani, Marilena Pasquali and many other critics.

Federico Fellini paid tribute to him in his film La Dolce Vita, which featured Morandi's paintings, as does La notte by Michelangelo Antonioni. One of the main characters in Sarah Hall's novel How to Paint a Dead Man is loosely based on Morandi. Don DeLillo's 9/11 novel "Falling Man" (2007) includes two Morandi still-life paintings on the wall of Nina's New York apartment. Morandi was a particular favourite of eccentic Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, who included a poem about the painter in his first anthology Many Flies Have Feathers (1973)

Two oil paintings by Morandi were chosen by the President of the United States Barack Obama in 2009 and are now part of the White House collection.

In 1992, Palazzo D'Accursio in Bologna created the Giorgio Morandi Museum, thanks to the donation made by his sister Maria Teresa Morandi of his works and also the atelier of the artist which were family belongings. Today the museum includes a reconstruction of his studio.

Exhibitions

Although Morandi was not greatly concerned with exhibitions during his own lifetime, his works have been displayed in the Modern Art Museum of Bologna and in many other cities, due largely to the Centro Studi Giorgio Morandi. In December 2008 an exhibition was dedicated to Giorgio Morandi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Photography and Giorgio Morandi

Some of the most famous photographers of the 20th century took Morandi's photo at his house on via Fondazza, at Grizzana Morandi's house, and at the Venice Biennal. Among the photographers who took Giorgio Morandi's picture or pictures of his studio are: Herbert List, Duane Michals, Jean Francois Bauret, Paolo Prandi, Paolo Ferrari, Lamberto Vitali, Libero Grandi, Franz Hubmann, Leo Lionni, Antonio Masotti, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Lee Miller, Giancolombo, Ugo Mulas, Luigi Ghirri, Gianni Berengo Gardin, and Luciano Calzolari.

The film-maker Tacita Dean filmed the inside of this artist's house on Fondazza. his art works where not good at all they visualised poo, food and dos. hes influence was hitler.

References

• Abramowicz, Janet; Morandi, Giorgio (2004). Giorgio Morandi: The Art of Silence. New Haven, [Conn.]: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10036-1
• Bell, Jane (1982). "Messages in Bottles: the Noble Grandeur of Giorgio Morandi". ARTnews, March 1982: 114–117
• Giorgio Morandi 1890-1964, exh. cat. ed. by Maria Cristina Bandera and Renato Miracco, (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008–2009), Milan 2008.
• Morandi, Giorgio (1988). Morandi. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-0930-7
• L. Vitali, Morandi: Catalogo Generale, 2 vols, Milan 1977
• Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910–1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X
• Marilena Pasquali, "Giorgio Morandi, saggi e ricerche 1990-2007". Firenze: Noèdizioni 2008

Further reading

• Coldwell, Paul (2006). Morandi's Legacy: Influences on British Art. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 0-85667-620-9

Hustvedt,Siri (2005) Mysteries of the Rectangle Chapter 7 Giorgio Morandi:Not Just Bottles. ISBN 1-56898-518-5

External links

• Museo Morandi