Giorgio Morandi

Francesco Arcangeli added Giorgio Morandi at the end of his work on the rediscovery of nature and expression in Bolognese art.

“I have reflected at considerable length about whether or not a Bolognese artist from our century could be placed among these ancient painters. In terms of quality, the choice was not hard: in my opinion, the level of Morandi’s work is such that his inclusion is absolutely legitimate. The problem was a different one, that is, whether his art contains those meanings that enable him to be placed in this context. I came to the conclusion that, yes, not only was it possible, but rather, it was necessary...

While the ancient painters in this exhibition ran up against an unfamiliar situation that was at odds with their deepest roots, which over time had become a typical dialectic of the ambivalent Bolognese situation (the conflict between Aspertini and Francia; Ludovico and Annibale Carracci; Crespi and Creti), Morandi internalised this struggle; and for me this is one of the essential reasons for his greatness.

In a history that began with the birth of Wiligelmo’s ‘physical body’, Morandi, with the mute desperation of a modern child of Paul Cézanne, marks its dramatic and desolate conclusion...

The object that had been loved in its every determination, but without falling into indiscreet analysis, now sank back into its material matrix, still a physical body, but unrecognisable, adrift. Even though the rhythms of the composition slackened, things revealed themselves in series, often cut down to the limit according to the constant in existential painting that we have called the ‘slice of life’”.