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The
Italian painter, Giorgio Morandi, spent his life creating an
oeuvre that is delirious in the most subtle, contemplative
fashion. He created a world of endless painting: variations of the
same still lifes over and over again--a refined world of domestic
simplicity. Bottles, boxes, and bowls that appear and reappear,
all labels removed, everything abstracted, so that reality itself
is reduced to shape and form and color-the crockery serving as
pure elements in beautiful abstract compositions that are
possessed of a certain peaceful rhythm and balance. The current
show at the Metropolitan Museum brings together a wonderfully
large and comprehensive collection of his paintings and we think
this show is a must-see!
Morandi's
colors are muted and earthy, a very Roman palette--the colors of
Italian houses-terracotta, sienna, burnt umber, ochre, the faded
colors of Italy itself. The browns shading into creams and grays,
and in the few still lifes of flowers there is also the blush of
pink or the palest hint of lemon yellow.
Morandi
himself said, "There is nothing more surreal, nothing more
abstract than reality." And in his paintings objects seem to
lose their very materiality--the glass of his bottles is never
glass, but is transformed into color, shape, form, and sometimes,
shadow. A painter's painter, Morandi worked as a professor and the
art world was always peripheral to his working life. And in the end
what is not said, what is removed, the colors and details that are
hidden, this restraint, is what is so glorious about his
work.
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