Still Life

Giorgio Morandi

1942

Oil on canvas

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A still life painting depicts a row of bottles and containers on a flat surface against a brown background. The objects are rendered with subtle variations in color and form, casting soft shadows. A tightly arranged group of boxes and vases sit on a table top represented only by a single line. Giorgio Morandi experimented with light and shadow falling across simple, geometric forms to create an abstract pattern. This work is characteristic of the still-life subjects that Morandi produced obsessively for more than forty years in his apartment in Bologna, Italy. His is an art of calm restraint in contrast to the other more flamboyant developments of modern art. Gallery G378 Bequest of Putnam Dana McMillan