+ Expand

Date: 1890-1964

+ Expand

Dimensions: 30 by 35cm.

11 3/4 by 13 3/4 in.

+ Expand

Provenance: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE ITALIAN COLLECTOR

Professor Felice Battaglia, Bologna
Galleria Marescalchi, Bologna
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the late 1980s

+ Expand

Literature: Lamberto Vitali, Morandi, Dipinti, Catalogo Generale, Volume Secondo, 1948-1964, Milan, 1977, no. 947, illustrated

+ Expand

Notes: The present work is a brilliant example of Morandi's mastery of the subject of still-life, and the painterly virtuosity with which he combined the simplest forms and a nearly monochrome palette into a delicate and perfectly balanced composition. The theme of still-life, which remained central to his art throughout Morandi's career, was always guided by his concern to bring together space, light, colour and form, and his great achievement was to reconcile this traditional genre with the abstract aesthetic of his own time. Focusing his artistic efforts on a limited range of subjects, he was able to perfect these pictorial concerns to their purest expression.

In Natura morta of 1955, the ensemble of objects is rendered in subtle tonal variations lending them a dream-like quality, and their material presence is transformed into a composition of pure colour and form. Morandi's mastery was in rendering these common objects with a timeless elegance and grace unique to his oeuvre. The sense of classical beauty and harmony in the present work is derived from the subtlety of palette and shapes, whose simplicity is interrupted by the most delicate of variations, giving the composition a dynamic quality: the nearly monochrome colour scheme, dominated by nuances of grey, is disrupted by the soft pink tonality of the box on the left, while the curved shape of the bottle in the middle stands in contrast with the predominant horizontal and vertical lines. In contrast to earlier still-lifes, in which Morandi used a larger range of shapes and objects, in the 1950s his art developed towards a more austere, geometrical style that allowed the artist to focus his attention on the pictorial elements of space, light, colour and form.