Fiori

Flowers occupied an important place in Morandi's work throughout his career, with the earliest known example of this subject matter dating from his early teens. By the time he painted Fiori, Morandi, who was considered to be the pre-eminent painter living in Italy, had begun to use silk flowers rather than fresh ones which would quickly fade. This permanence allowed him to arrange and rearrange his composition time and again until it perfectly expressed the sense of pictorial harmony he was aiming for. Morandi himself explained that sometimes it would take days of shifting and adjusting his motifs before he could achieve what he considered to be a perfect composition. Clearly real flowers would not have survived this elongated process, while instead the same silk flowers, covered in layers of dust from his studio, would appear in pictures dating from years apart, providing the sense of continuity and timelessness that was so pivotal to Morandi's vision.
In Fiori, Morandi has revealed the discreet beauty of these silk flowers by contrasting the detailed depiction of the folds and dense creases of crinkled pink petals with the flat, muted ground that occupies the rest of the canvas. There is a labyrinthine quality to the folds of the petals that edges towards abstraction, allowing Morandi to tap into the hidden layers of order that he perceived in the world around him and which he expressed through this harmonious composition. Fiori was given by the artist to one of his most enthusiastic admirers, George A. Bridges, who was based in Rio de Janeiro. Morandi was deeply touched by the continued encouragement of Bridges and his family as expressed in a series of letter exchanges from the artist to his client and friend. Fiori, with its delicate rendering of a harmonious composition in subtle and refined tones, is a testament to this ongoing friendship, given by Morandi with gratitude to his loyal supporter.