Giorgio Morandi: The Complete Story

Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) was the Italian painter who spent nearly fifty years painting the same bottles, boxes and jars in one Bologna room, and turned that stubborn repetition into some of the quietest, most prized still lifes of the twentieth century.

Nothing about his life was dramatic, and that is the point. Here is how a man who barely moved changed how painting looks at ordinary things.

Giorgio Morandi at a glance

1890. Born in Bologna, where he would live his entire life.
1910. Saw Cézanne reproductions and a Renaissance pilgrimage route: Giotto in Padua, Piero in Florence. His two poles were set.
1930. Appointed professor of etching at the Bologna academy, a post he held for over twenty five years.
1948. Won the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale, beating far louder names.
1964. Died in his apartment on Via Fondazza, a few steps from the room where he painted for fifty years.

A life on one street

Morandi was born in Bologna in 1890 and lived most of his life in a flat on Via Fondazza with his three sisters, painting in his bedroom studio. He taught etching at the city's Accademia di Belle Arti from 1930 to 1956, and rarely went further than Grizzana, the hill village where the family spent summers.

The legend calls him the monk of Bologna, a hermit who knew nothing of the world. It is wrong. He read the journals, studied Cezanne and Chardin closely, showed with the Italian avant garde as a young man, and knew exactly where his quiet pictures stood in modern art.

The bottles, and why he repainted them

He kept a shelf of bottles, tins and jugs, and he prepared them like a stage crew: he let dust settle and painted many of them matte so nothing would shine. He would spend weeks moving objects a few centimetres before touching a brush.

Out of that came around 1,350 oil paintings, most of them small, most of them of the same few objects. Seen together they work like variations in music. To me they are less about bottles than about how long you can look at anything before you actually see it.

The prize that surprised Venice

In 1948 the first Venice Biennale after the war gave Morandi its painting prize, choosing the quietest man in the room over far louder names. Film directors returned the compliment: Fellini hung Morandi canvases in La Dolce Vita in 1960, as shorthand for taste itself.

The dust he would not touch

Morandi let dust settle on his bottles and forbade anyone to clean them.

Dust softened the reflections. Some vessels he also painted over with flat house paint to kill the shine.

The objects were not props. They were prepared instruments.

An etcher first, for money and for love

For decades his day job was teaching etching, and his prints won respect before his canvases did.

He built tone from crosshatched lines the way he built paintings from touching edges.

Print scholars still rank him among the finest etchers of the twentieth century.

The visitors of Via Fondazza

By the 1950s collectors, directors, and critics climbed the stairs of his plain Bologna apartment.

Federico Fellini slipped a Morandi still life into La Dolce Vita as shorthand for seriousness.

Morandi received visitors politely, then went back to moving a bottle two centimeters to the left.

Where to see Morandi

Bologna keeps him. The Museo Morandi holds the largest collection of his work, and his studio home on Via Fondazza, Casa Morandi, can be visited. Outside Italy, the Metropolitan Museum and the Tate own strong groups of his still lifes and etchings.

The Giorgio Morandi questions that keep coming up

What is Giorgio Morandi famous for? Small, muted still lifes of bottles and jars, painted and repainted for almost fifty years.
Why did he paint the same objects? Repetition was the experiment: same things, shifting light, spacing and tone, until the ordinary turned strange.
Did Morandi ever leave Italy? Barely. A handful of short trips, late in life. His travel happened on the shelf in front of him.
Where can I see his paintings? The Museo Morandi and Casa Morandi in Bologna, and major museums from the Met to the Tate.

Why did Morandi let dust gather on his objects? Dust killed reflections and unified the surfaces. He also repainted some bottles with matte paint. He wanted things, not shine.

Is Morandi in any films? Yes. Fellini placed a Morandi still life in La Dolce Vita in 1960, and Don DeLillo later put his still lifes at the heart of the novel Falling Man.