MORANDI: Marvellous melancholy

Running until the end of April is a wonderful show of paintings, prints, watercolours and drawings by Giorgio Morandi. Treasures just five minutes’ walk from Highbury and Islington tube station.

Morandi (1890-1964) is best known for his mournful treatment of modest household objects, to which he returned again and again. Like a chess player he studied every configuration of bottles, jars, pots and glass. He loved his backgrounds which were so much part of a restrained palette, earth colours, greys, milky blues and whites.

In real life these pictures are so much lighter than the reproductions we enjoy online. And you can see how his palette becomes in and of itself lighter comparing paintings from 1927 to 1948.

Special for me where the watercolours and pencil drawings, the former float and are almost like abstracted apparitions. The pencil studies are akin to Morandi working things out, exploring, one of the essential qualities of drawing.

Overall, a triumph for focus and economy of means.

Do go. Runs until 28 May 2023

https://www.estorickcollection.com/exhibitions/giorgio-morandi-masterpieces-from-the-magnani-rocca-foundation

NATURA MORTA
Oil on canvas
14⅞ by 17¾ in. (37.8 by 45.1 cm)
Painted in 1951.


Category: Galleries & Exhibitions