Giorgio Morandi - Silence

Twentyone still lifes by Giorgio Morandi (Bologna, 1890 – 1964), some of which are from private collections and are on public display for the very first time. “Silent and humble” paintings in which the colours “vibrate with a slightly subdued brilliance that seems to come from within ... a style of painting that belongs perfectly in the perceptive and mental space between the visible and invisible" (Francesco Poli, from the exhibition catalogue).
An outstanding and unique opportunity to create a whole made of assonance and evocations: On the one hand, with formal research, with Fortuny's finest details, on the other, with the “metaphysical spaces” of Tirelli, on display on the first and second floor.

Curated by Daniela Ferretti and Franco Calarota.

Catalogue Skira

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Offering a detailed selection of rarely exposed works covering a period of time that goes from 1921 to 1963 the aim of the exhibition is to immerge the visitor inside the same meditative silence that Giorgio Morandi creates during realisation of his paintings.
The visitor is invited to penetrate in the painting in order to find a personal interpreation, that may also be simply questioning himself on the meaning of those vases and bottles, and of those objects that are always similar but always different, that are the code, the expressive alphabet of the artist. The attempt is to encourage a dialogue, between the artwork and the spectator, that is deprived of filters and words, being conscious that Morandi’s silence does not lend itself to an unambiguous interpretation and may each time be read and instantly known in a different way: not one but more silences, which are all possible fil rouge of his work.
It is around this very topic that Morandi’s critics have always expressed themselves. Arnaldo Beccaria (1939) narrates the ascetic preparation of each work “made of hungers, silences, and mortifications of colour” where “art is the expression of the moral dress of the artist” and of those “notes of colour that always compose themselves in the artwork’s silence; and that silence is lightened by an intense and secret music” that envelopes the work in “an absolute order” where everything is equalled, following an a inborn calculation, which is very acute and infallible, a sublime equation” where colours burn “as an intense and unconsummated sacrificed to silence”.
Following Francesco Arcangeli the masters “appears to render, maybe unconsciously, through his silence the supreme homage to a humanist that is desperate to see an image of man that is for now unreturnable”. Roberto Longhi suggests looking for silence in the harmony and balance of those objects which in their appearance hide a more profound reality. But it is Castor Seibel that highlights how Morandi’s painting expresses “what words can’t ever tell, that is a pictorial poem that exteriorises the elusive”. And he underlines that silence is evident to one’s eyes in the master’s works when he claims that “Morandi is capable of metamorphose silence, absence of sound, in a visual phenomenon: the light of silence”.


Fortuny Museum
from september 4, 2010 to january 9, 2011
San Marco 3758, Campo San Beneto, Venice

THE WORKS ON DISPLAY

1.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1921
oil on canvas, 36x41
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

2.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura Morta, 1941
oil on canvas, 41x49,5
Private Collection
On loan at Museo Morandi, Bologna

3.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1941
oil on canvas, 25x30
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

4.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1941
oil on canvas, 45x47
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

5.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1942
oil on canvas, 25,3x34,3
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

6.
Giorgio Morandi
Flowers, 1943
oil on canvas, 29x20
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

7.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1943
oil on canvas, 27,5x31,5
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

8.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1947
oil on canvas, 28x35
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

9.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1948
oil on canvas, 40x48
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

10.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1948
oil on canvas, 36x36
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna


11.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1948
oil on canvas, 35x40
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

12.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1950
oil on canvas, 35X45
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

13.
Giorgio Morandi
Flowers, 1951
oil on canvas, 21x19,5
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

14.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1953
oil on canvas, 25x45
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

15.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1954
oil on canvas, 35x45
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

16.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1956
oil on canvas, 30x35
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

17.
Giorgio Morandi
Flowers, 1958
oil on canvas, 23x23
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

18.
Giorgio Moranti
Natura Morta, 1958
oil on canvas, 25x30
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

19.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1960
oil on canvas, 25x30
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

20.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1962
oil on canvas, 31 x 36
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna

21.
Giorgio Morandi
Natura morta, 1963
oil on canvas, 25x30
Private Collection
Courtesy Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna