To think of Italian artwork is to think of the Renaissance. Supported by the Pope and the powerful Medici family, the arts flourished during the 14the through the 16th centuries. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, these are the artists whose names inspire awestruck reverence. Florence became the art capital of the world.
France gave us Impressionism in the 19th century, beginning a secular age in art. The modern period of Picasso and Matisse followed. Both men achieved the fame previously held by Renaissance artists and Paris became the art capital of the world during the 19th century and midway into the 20th century.
Quietly working in a studio in his hometown of Bologna, Italy, Giorgio Morandi, while watching the trends in Paris from afar, avoided the clamor. While managing to earn a reputation as a modern master and the foremost still life painter of the 20th century, he worked in solitude.
Influenced by the brooding, surrealist landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico, another Italian, Morandi did not entirely eschew tradition and his work is compared to Giotto, an early Renaissance painter much admired for his childlike simplicity. Morandi compositions, seemingly rudimentary arrangements of bottles and various containers, become monumental, evoking the architecture of medieval Bologna.
The adage less is more is the mainstay of the Morandi conceptual framework. With a muted hue structure, a lack of technical trickery such as reflections and special effects, his bottles are reduced to straightforwardness. With no personal significance given to his objects, he reduces the work further into abstraction. With all narrative removed, we are left with an entrenched spiritual component.
Traveling in Italy, the grandeur of its artistic heritage can overwhelm. A visit to the Morandi Museum in Bologna will refresh your aesthetic appreciation for Italian artwork. There is no history to absorb, no literary message to understand. Only the simple forms and the play of light. You will wonder how something so ordinary can revive your spirit. That is what a gifted artist can do. Read more about: Italian Artwork
France gave us Impressionism in the 19th century, beginning a secular age in art. The modern period of Picasso and Matisse followed. Both men achieved the fame previously held by Renaissance artists and Paris became the art capital of the world during the 19th century and midway into the 20th century.
Quietly working in a studio in his hometown of Bologna, Italy, Giorgio Morandi, while watching the trends in Paris from afar, avoided the clamor. While managing to earn a reputation as a modern master and the foremost still life painter of the 20th century, he worked in solitude.
Influenced by the brooding, surrealist landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico, another Italian, Morandi did not entirely eschew tradition and his work is compared to Giotto, an early Renaissance painter much admired for his childlike simplicity. Morandi compositions, seemingly rudimentary arrangements of bottles and various containers, become monumental, evoking the architecture of medieval Bologna.
The adage less is more is the mainstay of the Morandi conceptual framework. With a muted hue structure, a lack of technical trickery such as reflections and special effects, his bottles are reduced to straightforwardness. With no personal significance given to his objects, he reduces the work further into abstraction. With all narrative removed, we are left with an entrenched spiritual component.
Traveling in Italy, the grandeur of its artistic heritage can overwhelm. A visit to the Morandi Museum in Bologna will refresh your aesthetic appreciation for Italian artwork. There is no history to absorb, no literary message to understand. Only the simple forms and the play of light. You will wonder how something so ordinary can revive your spirit. That is what a gifted artist can do. Read more about: Italian Artwork
No comments:
Post a Comment