Giorgio Morandi Themes

Giorgio Morandi, born in 1890, was a quiet Italian painter just as famous for his simplistic life and love of the small town, Bologna, as he was the unassuming style used as a painter, was reviewed favorably by three critics we discussed in class: Fairfield Porter, Kia Penso, and Robert Hughes. The man lived most of his life in the same city and moved to his third and final address upon his father's death, a small house shared with his mother, Maria and three sisters, an older Anna and two younger ones, Dina and Maria Teresa. The only two periods mentioned where the man left the security of his hometown was for a trip to Florence and a brief stint in the military, the first giving him artistic inspiration, the second a nervous breakdown
He quipped "It is as though Cezanne had mellowed into a simplified serenity", but does not mention Derain, Picasso, Giotto, Masaccio, Piero Della Francesca, and Paolo Uccello, several other artists who had a profound effect on the man's work . The themes throughout Morandi's life involved either still-lives or the landscape around Bologna, often the same scene painted over different seasons and years. To this critic, the man created a mental image, the artist's motif is "intellectual. What he has seen in the fields or on the kitchen table illustrates the theory that what is most truly known, is not known by the senses, but by the mind." There is an abstraction of shape, height and width of the paintings' various parts, with an attempt to have used the bare minimum components, yet fulfill the vision the artist was trying to
I think the critic himself was amazed that there was no attempt to travel beyond his studio table, make any kind of symbolic reference, or join the major artistic movements of the decades, with only internalized concepts and non-political desires, "inorganic and dateless" ever shown on the paintings, meant to slowly "seep deliberately into one's attention." One factor that the writer pointed out was that there was a lot of editing and scaping that went into each still-life the man created, drawn from actual words spoken by the painter during an much earlier interview.
All three of these critics seemed to enjoy the art exhibits they attended, with each show a representation of some or all the artists various periods or mediums. I guess what is important here, to me, is that each of these individuals, depending on their education and background found different areas important and responded by association of those aspects with diverse criticisms. In truth, I also got lost within the few Giorgio Morandi I have seen in person. The man was truly a gifted