Morandi didn't have a real atelier, he lived and worked in a room, where there was a hail, a desk, a drawing table, an easel and an infinite number of shelves, where he placed vases, pitchers, glasses and boxes of all kinds.
These motionless objects were his models, which he composed and decomposed according to his mood in still lifes in perfect chromatic harmony.
Morandi, a Bolognese artist and poet, was a profound admirer of Pascal need Leopardi. It is precisely from the first that he understood the importance of making art coincide with life and of making his works live through his existence. And it is thus that in his works there is no boundary between space and time, between materiality and immateriality.
A simple man with a strong personality and aware of his expressive abilities, where his physical space becomes a projection of his own mental space.
His works appear as metaphysical natures of an unattainable world who know how to reach the essence of things.
Even the landscapes are immersed in a sort of almost reinvented light, dusty colors and mixed on themselves, not far from the Welsh sunsets of Turner.
But it is the still lifes that best represent him, where objects are the mirror of himself where he can investigate his own existence, in fact his "creatures" are very often always the same, immobile where the shadows coincide with their materiality.
Born in Bologna in 1890 where he will live all his life next to his beloved mother Maria Caccaferri and his three sisters, Dina, Anna and Maria Teresa.
In 1907 he enrolled in the preparatory course of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and in three years he graduated with full marks, obtaining an honorary diploma.
Two years later Morandi discovers in Vittorio Pica's book "The French Impressionists some paintings by Cézanne such as “Vase of flowers” and “Corner of the table”, works unknown to him but which fascinate him deeply.
And in 1909 he went to Florence to see the Uffizi Gallery, where he is particularly struck by the work of Giotto and masaccio need Paolo uccello. While in Venice visit the Biennale with one purpose, visit the room with thirty-seven works by Auguste Renoir.
Back in Bologna he painted "The spring landscape"And the"Snowfall“, where a Morandi-like personality is already perceived, even if the formation process of Morandi is in its infancy. In 1912 he obtained the qualification to teach drawing.
From this moment begin his relationship with the Futurism, and hence his analysis of the transparency of glass vases, but without ever going into the merits of the concept of strength and dynamism that underlie the futurist language.
We are in 1913, in this period the works are performed, "Glass still lifes""Sister portrait"3 some"Landscapes".
With the war, Morandi was called to arms, he would stop painting until he fell seriously ill and was sent home and reformed. Subsequent works seem to emerge from images of the very first Quattrocento with an evident reference to Giotto.
In 1920, a period of maturity began for the artist, where all his experiences were recomposed. He grinds his colors to find new tones, he prepares his canvases and chooses his objects more and more carefully than he does, bringing metaphysics into the simplest things. Here the forms appear images of a soul suspended in the air, and the works more and more eternal.
At the end of the 20s, the paintings take on a more naturalistic meaning, when he frequents the environments of the “Wild” and of the “Italian” founded respectively by Mino Maccari and Leo Longanesi.
In the following decade, Morandi's painting changed completely, passing from a naturalistic style to one where the form was fascinated by dissolution, almost dictated by the artist's psychological existence of offering himself to a test without appeals.
The paintings look like frames of the same image that are repeated, and as the second war is about to end, Morandi leaves Bologna to move to the countryside, between Bologna and Florence. A period this, where the painter chooses the path of interiority, silence and solitude that whitens everything.
When his notoriety increases, Morandi withdraws into himself and it is also the period in which he almost completely abandons landscapes and takes refuge in still life, with more and more contrast between light and shadow.
Gradually the salmon pink color that illuminates many of his paintings is also replaced by the almost violet black that gives the object the meaning of protagonist.
In recent years, we are between 1963 and 1964, he rediscovers his love for watercolor, like marking "the fleeting moment" on paper or perhaps that rainbow of his heart that he has never managed to express: where there are no neither landscapes nor still lifes but only essentialism of form.
Morandi composed the form, then knew how to erect it and make it live in silence. Now we can better understand that every object of his had a life, a movement hidden by the shadow or an immense fragility comparable to what Morandi's work has given to modern art.
