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View at the museum ↗Still Life
Giorgio Morandi1955
- Attribution
- Giorgio Morandi Italian, 1890-1964
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Physical dimensions
- Unframed: 43.2 × 61.6 cm (17 1/16 × 24 5/16 in.); 43.2 × 61.6 cm (17 × 24 1/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Harold L. Stuart Endowment
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Source rights statement: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes, typically produced in series, often feature a few closely positioned vases painted in subdued colors on small format canvases. Yet these humble vessels can seem monumental—as if, in the words of one 1950s critic, Morandi painted “cathedrals rather than bottles.” His signature buttery paint application imparts a rough-hewn quality to the work’s surface, while the muted, sun-baked color palette recalls the architecture of the artist’s native Bologna, Italy. The bottles’ symmetrical arrangement in particular imbues the work with a constructed linearity that demonstrates the quiet care with which Morandi composed this miniature world.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0