Giorgio Morandi's (1890–1964) steady pursuit of a poetic vision in still-life and landscape painting (as well as engravings and etchings) has secured him a singular and revered position in the history of modern art. While drawing on the achievements of Giotto, Cézanne, the metaphysical painters and the Cubists, Morandi's work finally resembles no one else's, and quietly defies paraphrase: everything is enigmatically clarified in the work itself, in all its apparent simplicity, on terms entirely specific to the artist's compositional gifts, in which respect he might almost be described as the Erik Satie of painting.
The original writings and interviews collected in this substantial new volume trace Morandi's various influences, illuminate the atmosphere of Bologna that so characterized the artist's sensibility, and allow us to analyze the myth that has formed around his life and personality. Karen Wilkin, editor of this volume and the author of monographs on Georges Braque, Anthony Caro, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Kenneth Noland and David Smith, has assembled an important contribution to the critical understanding of this great artist.