with Galleria Michaud, Florence
with Galleria La Scaletta, San Polo d’Enza
Private collection, Pavia

E. Tavoni and M. T. Morandi, Morandi disegni: catalogo generale, Milan, 1994, p. 46, no. 1930.5, illustrated.

Giorgio Morandi approached his art with unsurpassed concentration. Working in the small apartment he shared with his mother and three sisters in Bologna, Morandi’s carefully chosen collection of bottles, bowls, boxes and jars served as his muse. He altered the objects’ exteriors, erasing their labels and reflections to expose their shape and volume, painstakingly creating still-life arrangements he rendered in numerous paintings, drawings, and etchings. Quietly mesmerizing and mysterious, Morandi’s works hover between physical and spiritual, traditional and modern.

The present drawing is a brilliant early example of Morandi’s mastery of still life, and his gift for transforming a group of quotidian vessels into a composition that looks timeless. In this work, a rhythm is created from left to right by the gently undulating heights and depths of the bottles, boxes, vases and jars placed in two rows. Morandi’s delicate pencil lines record the contours of these objects, as well as the negative spaces between them, turning a simple still life into a vehicle for exploring subtle relationships and expressive arrangements of form. Lit from the right-hand side, the object cast shadows which define their contours, as well as their relationships with each other; these, along with the suggestion of their being situated on a tabletop, would gradually disappear from his later graphic works.

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