Giorgio Morandi

Giorgio Morandi’s still life paintings encourage and reward slow looking. They gently but persuasively invite viewers into a meditative encounter with form, light and the simple beauties in the everyday. Still Life with a Bottle exemplifies the quietude, yet expressive authority, of Morandi’s decades-long examination and arrangement of humble objects. In his austere studio in Bologna, he returned obsessively to a collection of domestic bottles, vases, jars and boxes, often spending days adjusting their placement by millimetres to arrive at fragile, but refined and evocative, relationships between the various items.

Morandi’s compositions are enigmatically minimal but they are not simple, with several of the same objects recurring in alternative arrangements for other still lifes. They constitute a limited yet constant assortment, one that repeatedly enabled Morandi to see and paint each of them anew and to focus on what the viewer encounters in his mesmerisingly retrained works: delicacy and intricacy in pictorial structure; interplays of line, shape, and spatial tension; subtleties of light, muted colour, and tone.

Morandi’s command of line and form is revealed in his exceptional output as a printmaker, a practice to which he was deeply committed but which has been overshadowed by the reverent attention paid to his painting. He was a self-taught etcher and taught printmaking for several years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. The technical virtuosity and graphic power of Morandi’s etchings are underpinned by complex nuances of light and shade, tonal variation and the compressed spatial organisation that characterise his paintings.

Text by Tansy Curtin, Assistant Director, Artistic and Collection Programs, Catalogue for Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition

Art Terms
Australian Curriculum Connections

Cloisonnism

A Post-Impressionist painting style characterized by flat areas of bold color enclosed by dark, heavy outlines.

Line

A line is a mark that spans a distance between two points. A line can be thick, thin, straight or curved. It can also change direction or overlap with other lines and be zigzagged and cross-hatched.

Form refers to the volume of a shape.

Form

This can be in a three-dimensional sense when we consider sculptures, but form can also relate to the illusion of a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional or flat surface.

Shape

A shape is formed when two points of a line meet, enclosing the space. Geometric shapes consist of squares, triangles, circles and cylinders.

Organic shapes are generally irregular and are found in nature and include things like plants and animals.

Space

Space is defined by the areas encompassed in, around and sometimes between works of art. Space can be dense, cluttered, open, symmetrical, shallow or flat.

In two-dimensional works of art, the main focal point usually occupies the positive space, while the space around the main object is the negative space. Negative space can be a great way to draw the viewers’ attention to a particular aspect of a composition. Artists sometimes use different colour values or one and two-point perspective to give an illusion of space or create an impression of depth.

Proportion and scale

Proportion and scale relate to the size of an object, element or figure. Scale relates to the size of an object or person compared with other objects or people in the same work of art. For example, when we paint a picture of a person outside their home, the person, if the picture was to scale, shouldn’t be bigger than the house.

Explore & Respond

ideas, practices, works and contexts for the arts in the lives of individuals and groups across cultures, times, places and communities
the diversity of how, where and why people create, make, perform, present and respond across arts forms, and the roles that the arts play in lives, cultures and communities
ways in which the arts communicate cultural and aesthetic knowledge, purpose, meaning and emotion
ways in which the arts develop empathy and understanding of multiple perspectives, across personal, local, regional, national and global contexts.

Developing practices and skills

creative skills for using and manipulating the elements, principles, conventions and/or processes of arts forms
using available materials and technologies to develop and communicate ideas, perspectives and/or meaning
critical skills in observing, reflecting, analysing, evaluating and/or documenting their own and others’ arts-making practices, using language and/or embodied practices.

Creating and Making

individual and/or collaborative work using available resources/materials in diverse existing, emerging and innovative forms, styles and/or genres
new work, which may be refined and realised, or may be presented as a work in progress
interpretations of work created by others and interpretations of their own work as performers; interpreting involves informed observation, analysis, reflection and evaluation.

Presenting and Performing

share their work using available spaces, materials, technologies and/or digital tools
plan, select, design and rehearse their presentations and performances

What can you see in this still life?
How would you describe the colour scheme?
Does the painting have a particular atmosphere/mood or feeling – why?
It has been suggested that Morandi lived a simple life and rarely left his studio in Italy. How does his compositions suggest a reclusive or isolated life?
How would you describe Morandi’s arrangement of these objects within the composition?
What is more important, the objects Morandi paints or the space around it (negative space)? Discuss Morandi’s use of tone, space and colour.

Colour mixing challenge

Mix muted Morandi-inspired colours using only primary colours plus white and black. Apply these to a painting of simple still life objects such as jugs, jars and bottles.

Study Still Life with a Bottle and identify the objects, colours, shapes, or tonal values you can see. Consider how Morandi has arranged the objects and the effect this creates.
Research Giorgio Morandi and write a short paragraph explaining how his interest in ordinary objects influenced this work of art.
Select an ordinary object you find interesting. Assign a personality or write a story about the life of this object. Use your imagination!
Look at works by Kirsten Coelho and Josh Juett. Discuss how these works are similar and or different to the work of Morandi.

Photograph a still life at home. Perhaps capture the family dinner table before, during, and after, a meal.
Arrange bottles, jars, cups, and boxes into “families” and create observational drawings.
Paint jars and simple found objects using a muted colour scheme. Draw these using coloured pastel or chalk to achieve a soft, hazy appearance.
Collect glassware and draw on black paper with white charcoal or chalk to focus on the reflective surfaces

Classroom Preparation

In preparing for a unit of work looking at Morandi, introduce students to drawing still life. This could include a variety of methods such as:

introduction to proportions and scale
a series of still life drawings using a variety of objects from different angles.

Take a look at our 'Guide to using artists as a starting point' flowchart to see our approach to responding to Morandi. Here we prioritised key themes and ideas rather than copying Morandi's painting.

Download Flowchart>>

Largest Still Life Drawing
Activity in Focus

Recommended for Students of all ages

Create a still life arrangement of cups, glasses and vases that have been placed on a shelf or table to draw. Pay close attention to proportion and scale - select objects that are varied in shape and size.

Image: Longest still life at St. John's Grammar

Draw the arrangement.
Draw the arrangement again from another angle, or from above.

Experiment with different surfaces and materials. You might like to work on coloured paper using both charcoal, pencil, pastel or even biro.

Create a long collaborative still life using your tableaux.