GIORGIO MORANDI

ROBILANT+VOENA are pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) on view at their St Moritz gallery from 5-26 of March 2016. This will be the second exhibition at the gallery dedicated to the celebrated Italian artist, following the 2011 show ‘Still Life’ held at their London space. The exhibition will include works the artist realised during the 1940s and 1960s, bringing together a selection of eight landscapes and still lifes. Morandi was a unique, poetic and challenging artist renowned for his subtle and contemplative paintings which, despite the repetition of subject-matter, are extremely complex in their organisation and execution. Throughout the course of his extensive and very prolific career, Morandi remained committed to developing a deliberately limited visual language. In doing so he concentrated almost exclusively on the production of still lifes and landscapes, repeatedly making use of the same familiar subject-objects: bottles, vases, boxes, flowers or the same landscape views, taken from the window of his home on Via Fondazza or in Grizzana. Included in this exhibition are two Flower paintings produced ten years apart (in 1943 and 1953) and two Still Lifes, from 1949/1950 and 1959. Whilst these paintings are characterised by simplicity of composition, great sensitivity to tone, colour, light and compositional balance, it is possible to notice in his later works a shift in focus, which tends to fade and gradually dissolve the material. In addition, the show will feature four paintings from his Landscape series. In his 1943 work, completed during the war, it is still possible to clearly distinguish a house and trees, while, in the other three paintings, completed between 1962 and 1963 (a year before the artist’s death) we witness a further simplification of form, colour and line. The landscape and its ‘objects’ (house and trees) seem to be on the brink of dissolving, becoming more abstracted and inviting the viewer to use an approach which is meditative and contemplative. Although Morandi’s work belongs to the traditional genre of figurative painting, it encompasses fundamental ideas about the nature of painting and artistic practice, making him one of the great pioneers of subsequent generations of artists and artistic movements such Abstraction and Minimalism.